Method and system for facilitating collaboration sessions

ABSTRACT

A method and system for facilitating a collaboration session among a plurality of conferees, each conferee using a distinct interface device that includes a distinct display screen, the interface devices including at least a first interface device including a first display screen used by a first conferee, the method comprising the steps of presenting a first session interface on the first display screen, presenting a second session interface on the second display screen, and during a conference content sharing session while content is being shared among conferees in at least the first and second sharing windows, identifying other display screens that may be used to present shared content, presenting screen selection options for other display screens via the first session interface, receiving a selection via the first session interface of at least one of the presented screen selection options and in response to the received selection, associating the display screen that is associated with the selected screen selection option with the first and second session interfaces for accessing session content during the on-going session.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.14/640,186, which was filed on Mar. 6, 2015, and which is titled “Methodand System for Facilitating Collaboration Sessions” and claims prioritytherethrough to U.S. provisional patent application No. 61/994,372,which is titled “Method and System for Facilitating CollaborationSessions,” which was filed on May 16, 2014, and is also related to andclaims priority to U.S. provisional patent application No. 61/949,696,which is titled “Method and System for Initiation and Creation ofCollaboration Session,” which was filed on Mar. 7, 2014.

BACKGROUND OF THE DISCLOSURE

The present disclosure relates generally to network-based systems forelectronic collaboration sessions with at least some confereesparticipating from remote locations and more specifically to a systemthat enables a session to be initiated or scheduled and populated withcontent using software tools that are already familiar to most computerand communication network users.

The disclosure also describes a system that enables conferees associatedwith a session to add documents and files to a session queue at any timeafter a session is instantiated so that the queue provides a persistentrepository for content related to the session that can be accessed atany time by one, a subset or all conferees associated with the session.The content including documents or files can be obtained from anydigital source. Any conferee can invite any other person to associatewith a session after which the invitee has full session privileges in atleast some embodiments. The disclosed system, in at least someembodiments, enables conferees to control shared content during aconference in an egalitarian fashion where any conferee can open anycontent from the queue to share at any time and where each conferee alsohas the ability to independently view any document in a private windowalong side a sharing window.

Conferences and meetings have evolved from gatherings or sessions inconference rooms where participants met in person in the same physicallocation to electronic collaboration sessions where conferees can attendand substantially fully participate in sessions electronically or “online” from remote locations. To this end, tools have been developed thatenable remote conferees to appear via audio and/or video to otherconferees and to view and hear other conferees via video and audio,respectively. Tools have also been developed that enable remoteconferees to share content such as documents, images, video clips,application output, web sites, etc., with other conference attendees.

One now ubiquitous content sharing tool is electronic mail commonlyreferred to as E-mail. As well known to almost all computer users,E-mail enables users to transmit and memorialize communications betweentwo or more persons and also to share content (e.g., documents, images,video clips, etc.) via attachment to E-mail messages. Essentially allE-mail programs have similar features (e.g., fields, tool bars, etc.)that computer users are extremely familiar. Familiarity with E-mail hasresulted in widespread use.

While on line collaboration and communication sessions have proven veryuseful, known collaboration tools have several shortcomings. First,known collaboration tools often require several steps in order to set upand manage a session. For instance, assume a session initiator intendsto invite seven other conferees to a session at 8 AM on Tuesday and thatthe session initiator, while thinking about the session, decides thatthe initiator wants to refer to several different sets of content duringthe session including two word processor documents, a video clip and twospreadsheets showing sales figures for a prior quarter and a currentquarter business cycle. Here, in order to set up the session, in manycases a session initiator has to use scheduling software to schedule thesession and send invitations to the seven other conferees to be invitedto the session. In addition, the initiator will likely have to selectand send each of the five sets of content to be delivered to the othersession conferees prior to the session so that the other conferees canaccess that information during the session. Hereinafter, unlessindicated otherwise, a content set will be referred to as a file or arecord. To expedite access by other conferees the initiator may attachall five files to be shared to a single E-mail to be transmitted to theother conferees. Upon receiving the scheduling notice, each of the sevenconferees needs to open the notice and accept the session to bescheduled on their calendars.

Now assume that two days after initially scheduling the Tuesday 8 AMsession, the initiator identifies two other files (e.g., another wordprocessor document and a drawing generated via a drawing application)that the initiator intends to share with others during the session.Here, the initiator may attach the other two files to another E-mail,reselect the seven other conferees and send the other files to the otherconferees.

Assume that one day before the session is to commence, the conferenceinitiator determines that one of the original five files should beswapped out and replaced by another file (e.g., perhaps a new version ofthe file being swapped out). Here, the initiator may send yet anotherE-mail to the invitees including the new file and, perhaps, a note thatone of the original files should be ignored.

Also, assume that upon receiving the invite to the Tuesday 8 AM session,a first and a second of the other conferees each identifies other filesthat they would like to share during the session. Here, each of thefirst and second other conferees may attach additional files to E-mailsto the other conferees and send their files with a note indicating adesire to share the files.

Next assume that two of the seven conferees invited are not availablefor the session. Here, the initiator may invite two other substituteconferees to the session (e.g., proxies for the two originally invitedconferees that cannot attend). In this case, the initiator would alsohave to forward files to be shared to each of the two proxies. Inaddition, each other conferee that intends to share files would alsohave to forward files to the two proxies.

Once a session starts, all conferees connect to the session for sharing.Here, connection often requires each conferee to call into a session foraudio and/or video communication. In at least some cases, during asession, each conferee is required to access shared files separately byopening E-mail attachments as other conferees refer to different files.Here, where multiple conferees shared files in different E-mails,keeping all conferees “on the same page” can be a burdensome task atbest as conferees have to independently access the previously sentE-mails, access specific files currently being discussed in an accessedE-mail and then switch between files and among pages or portions ofspecific files as other files and sections of files are referenced.

To reduce the complexities associated with scheduling a session andsynchronizing shared content during a session, systems have beendeveloped that enable conferees to simultaneously view content shared byother conferees. For instance, web-based conferencing software has beendeveloped whereby conferees can share files, applications, etc., bysharing output presented on display screens of their personal computingdevices (e.g., desktop computers, laptop computers, tablet typecomputers, smart phone or personal digital assistant type computers,etc.). Here, in addition to creating an audio and/or video link betweenconferees, an internet or other network link is created for sharing thecontent where all conferees link to a session run by a server.

Some web-based systems enable a conference initiator to earmark filesincluding documents and other content to be shared in a session so thatthe files can easily be accessed by the initiator during a session. Forinstance, where an initiator intends to share seven files, each of theseven files can be linked to the session for access by the initiator.Where an invited conferee intends to share two files, the conferee canaccess those files during the session period and share the files withother conferees.

While web-based systems solve some of the problems associated with priorsystems, they still have several shortcomings. For instance, to initiatea session, many known systems require a conferee to pre-register with asession server to create a system account. This process often requiresentry of personal information as well as a process to establish sometype of linkage to a user's electronically stored contact list(s), aprocess to establish a link to files controlled by the conferee, andrequires at least some time commitment by the conferee to enter theinformation and for the server to set up the account.

As another instance, after an account has been set up, to initiate asession, a conferee needs to access a system software interface (e.g., abrowser page) that, in many cases, is completely unfamiliar to theconferee. Here, while effort has been made to make initiation interfacessimple and intuitive, where a user does not use the interface routinely,even a simple interface can be intimidating to use and therefore operateas a deterrent to greater use.

As another instance, while known systems enable a conferee (e.g., aninitiator) to queue files for sharing during a session, known systems donot provide a universal session queue to receive all conferee filesprior to and/or during a session. For instance, in a conferenceincluding eight conferees where an initiator intends to share sevenfiles and each of the other seven conferees intends to share two fileseach for a total of 21 files, there is no queue for receiving all of thefiles. No universal session queue means conferees often cannot form anunderstanding of the volume of content to be shared during a session orintentions of other conferees to share files. In these cases, oftentimes session periods end prior to conferees sharing files or valuablesession time is wasted with conferees verbally bantering back and forthabout intention to share files during the session.

In addition, because files are not queued in a universal queue, there isno ability for conferees to access or control other conferee filesunless those files are shared by the conferee that provided the files.For instance, where a session initiator has earmarked seven files to beshared during a session, other conferees can only see and interact withfiles currently shared by the initiator. For example, if the initiatorshares a single word processor document with other conferees, a secondconferee can only see and manipulate the shared document and has noability to access or control the other six files earmarked by theinitiator to be shared.

Another problem with known systems is that real time control of remoteconferee display screens is often slow as updates between linkedcomputers have to be sent in their entirety to each computer linked to asession. Often times there is at least some latency between when actionsoccur on a local screen and when actions are replicated on remotescreens given network capabilities, noise, etc. Any latency in contentdelivery is bothersome and can hamper the natural flow of informationbetween disparately located conferees.

One other problem with known conferencing systems is that known systemsoften are tied to specific hardware or, more specifically, to specificdisplay screens for sharing content. For instance, many conferencespaces have dedicated display screens that are mounted within orotherwise substantially permanently secured within a conference spaceand that are linked to hardware switching devices for receiving contentfrom sources. In other cases screens may be mounted to carts formovement to different locations within a larger conferencing area butthe screens are still dedicated to the larger conferencing system. Inmany cases large flat panel display screens exist that are primarilyprovided for some non-conferencing purpose such as to show a video or todisplay a television show (e.g., CNN news network). Despite manyavailable large display screens at many locations, those screens aretypically not useable for conferencing purposes. Inability to useavailable large displays for conferencing purposes is especiallytroublesome in cases where a remote conferee is required to use a deviceincluding a small display (e.g., a smart phone or tablet type device)during a conference despite an available larger screen display in theconferee's vicinity.

Yet another problem with existing conferencing systems is that knownsystems only allow most conferees to use a single display screen duringa session despite the fact that the information to be shared amongdisparately located conferees often is more than can optimally bepresented on a single display screen. For instance, while there areconference spaces that have been specifically set up to use two, threeor more common large display screens within a single conference space toshare content among conferees within the space, in most cases remoteconferees patching into these systems to participate in conferenceactivities only have a single desktop computer screen, a laptop screen,a tablet screen, etc. Viewing content from a large display screen on asmaller screen is difficult for many conferees. Where content is sharedon several large display screens in a local conference space, viewingall of that content on a smaller screen is almost impossible. Here, oneoption is for a remote conferee to view content from only one largescreen at a time and to flip through the large screen content but thatsolution means that the conferee cannot see all of the content at thesame time.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE DISCLOSURE

Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a system, method andprogram for initiating and/or scheduling an online collaboration sessionamong a session initiator and at least some remote invitees to a sessionusing a conventional E-mail system. In some cases a specific virtualmailbox address may be assigned to a session server function schedulingwhere any E-mail addressed to the address is used to schedule a sessionat a future time. Thus, here, any system user that sends an E-mailaddressed to the mailbox can schedule a session without having topre-register or set up a user account of some type.

In some embodiments a session initiator may be able to identify inviteesby simply adding invitees to a conventional “To” or target field in anE-mail addressed to the session server scheduling function. Forinstance, in addition to addressing an E-mail to the session serverscheduling function, the initiator may add seven other E-mail addressesto the address or target field to indicate seven invitees to thesession. Here, because the request to initiate or schedule a session ismade via an initiator's conventional E-mail account, the initiator'sE-mail contact information is automatically accessible to the initiatorfor selecting invitees for the session. Here, when an E-mail is sent,the E-mail is transmitted to the session server which gleans the inviteelist from the target field and adds the invitees to a session record. Inaddition to adding invitees to the session record, the server generatesinvite E-mails to each of the invitees requesting either that theinvitee confirm that the invitee will join the scheduled session. Wherean invitee agrees to join a scheduled session, the server maycommunicate with the invitee's scheduling software to add the session tothe invitee's calendar.

In at least some embodiments other session server addresses may beassociated with other session management functions. For instance, insome cases the server may support an immediate session start functionwhereby a user can start a session immediately by sending an e-mail to a“startsession@session.com” address. Here, the process above forscheduling a session would be repeated to invite conferees identified inthe target field to provide other functionality.

In some embodiments the invite E-mail sent to a session invitee mayinclude a simple “Join” icon for joining a session that is progressingor that will commence shortly or may include an “Accept” or “Schedule”icon that is selectable to accept or schedule a future session.

In at least some embodiments the server may generate a session queue foreach of the sessions that is scheduled where the session queue storesinstances of files that may be shared by conferees during a session.Here, to add files to the session, in at least some cases a conferee maybe able to add files to a queue via an E-mail system. For instance,where a session initiator knows that she intends to share seven fileswith other conferees during a session, the initiator can add those filesto a session request attachment field in an E-mail. Here,advantageously, E-mail systems already include intuitive tools that mostpeople are comfortable using for selecting and attaching files to anattachment field. Here, when the system server receives an E-mail toinitiate or schedule a session, the server may obtain all attached filesand automatically add those files to an associated session queue.

In at least some cases an invitee may be able to add files to a queuewhen the invitee accepts an invitation to join or schedule a session. Inthis regard, for instance, in some cases upon indicating a desire tojoin or schedule a session, the server may cause an E-mail system togenerate and present a response E-mail to be sent by the invitee wherethe response E-mail is addressed to the session server and enables aconferee to add additional files to an attachment field. The responseE-mail may include instructions for the invitee to add files to thesession queue along with precanned text where the invitee confirms adesire to join or schedule the session. Again, here, the invitee'sE-mail system already includes familiar tools for adding files asattachments so the invitee does not need to perform some unfamiliarprocess.

In at least some embodiments any conferee may be able to add files to asession queue at any time prior to, during or after a session conferenceusing an E-mail system. For instance, a conferee may open a new E-mailtemplate, attach files to share and address the E-mail to an “add file”mailbox associated with a session server add file function. Any attachedfiles may be added to a session queue.

In some cases a conferee can use a web-based browser to link to asession at any time after the session has been instantiated (e.g.,scheduled) and may be able to add files or documents to the session,delete documents, annotate documents, etc.

In at least some embodiments any conferee may be able to access and atleast independently view any files in the queue of a session regardlessof who added the file to the queue either before, during, or after asession. This feature encourages conferees to prepare for a session bybecoming familiar with content other conferees intend to share and alsohelps conferees understand importance of content so that a naturalordering of content based on importance can occur.

In some embodiments, in addition to a document or session queue, asystem interface will provide a conferee queue with images or, whereavailable, real time video, of each conferee linked to a session. Wherevideo is available, even where the queue only includes smallrepresentations of each conferee, slight movements and expressions ofconferees can convey a lot of information. In some cases a real timevideo of a conferee may be opened in a sharing window or, in othercases, in a secondary window in addition to a sharing window for abetter view of one of the conferees. In other cases a real time confereevideo may be moved to a second display screen.

In some embodiments, during a session conference while content is beingshared in a sharing window, any conferee may open any queue document orfile in a private window for private viewing. The privately vieweddocument may be a second instance of the document being shared in thesharing window or may be a different document. Two conferees may openseparate instances of the same document in their private windows and mayview the same or different pages of the document simultaneously. Twoconferees may open different documents in their private windows. Thesharing window remains visible on all conferee views at all times. Thus,the sharing and private window arrangement enables all conferees to viewany queue document at any time during a sharing conference while stillhaving a view of the shared document.

In some embodiments, whenever a conferee links to a session, instancesof every document or file in the session queue are automaticallytransmitted to the conferee's device and are cached in a memoryassociated with the device. Thereafter, quick access to any document ina private windows and quick manipulation of documents in the sharingwindows of all linked devices can be facilitated.

In at least some embodiments conferees can annotate documents in thesharing window on their device and the annotations are shown on alllinked devices. In some cases conferees can annotate documents inprivate windows where the annotations may be automatically added toinstances of the documents cached by other conference devices, may onlybe added to other instances of the documents upon an affirmative sharingstep by a conferee, or may only be stored for private use by theconferee that generated the annotation.

In some embodiments, in addition to a session queue that is identicalfor all session conferees, the system may provide a private queue foreach conferee for storing documents, files, etc., that the conferee isconsidering sharing with other conferees but that the conferee does notwant to share at the current time for some reason. During a session,when a document is moved from a private queue to the session queue, adocument icon for the document is added to each instance of the sessionqueue on devices linked to the session and the document is transmittedto each of those devices for caching to facilitate quick access.

In at least some embodiments large display screens that can be linked toa session via invitation but that cannot be used as input devices mayonly show the sharing window as opposed to other interface features usedfor session navigation. The larger version of the sharing windowprovides a view that is easier to see.

In at least some embodiments an image or video icon of the conferee thathas opened a document in the sharing windows may be visuallydistinguished in some fashion to show or indicate who has currentcontrol of the sharing window. For instance, a colored shadow or otherhighlight about a conferee icon may indicate current control.

In some cases the system may be able to wirelessly monitor locations ofconferee devices and identify proximate large display screens availableto be invited to a session. The session interface may present proximatescreen options to simplify the invitation process and reduce thefriction associated with linking a screen to a session.

In some embodiments any conferee may be able to share her device desktopin a sharing window. By sharing a desktop, any conferee can run anyapplication on their device and share the output of that applicationwith other conferees. For instance, a conferee could share a wordprocessing application, a spreadsheet application, a drawingapplication, etc. In some cases only the conferee sharing a desktop cancontrol applications presented via the desktop while in other cases anyconferee may be able to control any other conferee's shared desktopapplication.

To the accomplishment of the foregoing and related ends, the invention,then, comprises the features hereinafter fully described. The followingdescription and the annexed drawings set forth in detail certainillustrative aspects of the invention. However, these aspects areindicative of but a few of the various ways in which the principles ofthe invention can be employed. Other aspects, advantages and novelfeatures of the invention will become apparent from the followingdetailed description of the invention when considered in conjunctionwith the drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SEVERAL VIEWS OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a schematic view of a communication system includingcomponents that may be used to perform various aspects of methods of thepresent disclosure;

FIG. 2 is a flow chart illustrating a process that may be performedusing a personal computing device to initiate a conferencing sessionamong a plurality of conferees using an E-mail system that is consistentwith at least some aspects of the present disclosure;

FIG. 3 is a screen shot that may be presented to a conference initiatorvia an E-mail system including some content that may be used to schedulea conferencing session;

FIG. 4 is a flow chart illustrating a process that may be performed by asession server for facilitating various session management functionsthat is consistent with at least some aspects of the present disclosure;

FIG. 5 is a flow chart illustrating a process that may be performed viaan invitee computing device that is consistent with at least someaspects of the present disclosure;

FIG. 6 is a screen shot of an invite E-mail template that may bepresented to a conference invitee according to at least some aspects ofthe present disclosure;

FIG. 7 is a schematic of an exemplary session database that isconsistent with at least some aspects of the present disclosure;

FIG. 8 is screen shot of an E-mail template to be used to add files to asession or conference queue;

FIG. 9 is a screen shot illustrating an E-mail that can be used by aconference invitee to join a conference;

FIG. 10 is a flow chart illustrating a sub-process that may besubstituted for a portion of the process of FIG. 4;

FIG. 11 is a flow chart illustrating a sub-process that may besubstituted for a portion of the process of FIG. 4;

FIG. 12 is a screen shot showing a session interface that is consistentwith at least some aspects of the present disclosure;

FIG. 13 is similar to FIG. 12, albeit showing another screen shot wherea specific file has been opened in a common display space;

FIG. 14 is similar to FIG. 12 albeit showing another screen shot;

FIG. 15 is a screen shot showing a private window opened for viewing bya conferee;

FIG. 16 is similar to FIG. 15 albeit where the screen shot enables aconferee to add a privately viewed image to a conference queue;

FIG. 17 is similar to FIG. 12 albeit showing another screen shot where aconferee can add or delete files from a conference queue;

FIG. 18 is a screen shot showing an on screen tool for adding inviteesand additional common display screens to a session;

FIG. 19 is a screen shot showing another version of a conferee'sinterface that is consistent with at least some aspects of the presentinvention;

FIG. 20 is a screen shot showing a window for adding content to asession queue;

FIG. 21 is a screen shot showing a sharing window, a private window anda document queue that is consistent with at least some aspects of thepresent invention;

FIG. 22 is a screen shot showing the private window of FIG. 21 enlarged;

FIG. 23 is a partial screen shot showing download and trach tools foreach queue document;

FIG. 24 is a screen shot showing a document opened in a sharing windowwith some annotations on the document;

FIG. 25 is a screen shot showing different pages of the same documentopened in a private window and a sharing window;

FIG. 26 is a screen shot showing different documents opened in a privatewindow and in a sharing window;

FIG. 27 shows two partial screen shots for two different confereedevices where one of the conferees is viewing a first document in aprivate window and a second conferee is viewing a second document in aprivate window at the same time;

FIG. 28 is a partial screen shot showing a session queue and a separateprivate queue that is consistent with at least some aspects of thepresent disclosure;

FIG. 29 is a screen shot showing a conferee's real time video image in asharing window;

FIG. 30 is a flow chart illustrating a document caching process that isconsistent with the present disclosure;

FIG. 31 shows a conferee device screen shot and a large display screenshot where the large display screen shot does not include sessionnavigation tools while the device screen shot includes sessionnavigation tools;

FIG. 32 is a large display screen shot that, in addition to showing alarge representation of a session sharing window, also includes aconferee queue representation that shows conferees currently linked to aconference where a conferee icon associated with the conferee thatopened the document currently in the sharing window is highlighted;

FIG. 33 shows a conferee device screen shot as well as two large displayscreens where the device screen shot includes tools for inviting largescreens to a session.

FIG. 34 is similar to FIG. 33, albeit where a dongle is used to render alarge display screen linkable to a session where the dongle has not beenlinked to a large screen;

FIG. 35 is similar to FIG. 34, albeit where the dongle has been insertedand a conferee has entered a display screen indicator into an invitefield;

FIG. 36 is a flow chart illustrating invitation of a large screen to asession and a caching process whereby session documents in a queue arecached in a large screen memory or an add on dongle;

FIG. 37 is a flow chart illustrating a process whereby, if no confereedevices are located proximate a large display screen that is linked toan ongoing session, the large screen is dis-associated with the session;

FIG. 38 shows a tablet type computing device and a smart phone typecomputing device that are used by a single conferee where differentsession content is presented on each of the devices;

FIG. 39 shows a window that may be presented via a conferee's devicedisplay screen for designating screens as primary or secondary when ascreen is invited to a session;

FIG. 40 shows two screen shots correspond to two large display screensthat may be used during a conferencing session;

FIG. 41 is a screen shot illustrating a conferee device display screenthat includes first and second sharing windows where document icons arehighlighted to indicate which document is in which window;

FIG. 42 is a screen shot illustrating a conferee device display thatincludes a sharing window and a smaller window for showing a real timevideo of a conferee;

FIG. 43 is a screen shot showing how a document in a private window maybe shared in a side bar fashion with another conferee linked to asession;

FIG. 44 is a screen shot showing a side bar view of a session;

FIG. 45 is a screen shot that shows a conferee's desktop being shared ina sharing window;

FIG. 46 is a screen shot showing an intermediate step that occurs when aconferee starts the process of sharing the conferee's desktop to ensurethat a desktop is not inadvertently shared;

FIG. 47 is a screen shot showing a view that a conferee may have whenthe conferee's desktop is being shared in a session;

FIG. 48 is a screen shot showing differently visually distinguishedfeatures on a conferee device display linked to a session where thedifferent appearances indicate ownership of actions, documents, etc.,associated with the features;

FIG. 49 shows a smart phone type device including an interface foradding an image to a session queue with minimal friction;

FIG. 50 is similar to FIG. 49, albeit showing the device in anintermediate state where a conferee selects one of several sessions towhich to add an image;

FIG. 51 is a screen shot showing highlighting of a specific conferee'sdocuments in a queue as well as highlighting of documents that are “new”to the conferee associated with the device used to present the screenshot;

FIG. 52 is a screen shot showing a history view of a session;

FIG. 53 is a screen shot showing a different session history view;

FIG. 54 s a screen shot showing a different session history view;

FIG. 55 s a screen shot showing a different session history view; and

FIG. 56 is a screen shot showing output of a conferee's device displaythat enables a conferee to share output of applications run on theconferee's device with other conferees linked to a session.

While the invention is susceptible to various modifications andalternative forms, specific embodiments thereof have been shown by wayof example in the drawings and are herein described in detail. It shouldbe understood, however, that the description herein of specificembodiments is not intended to limit the invention to the particularforms disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover allmodifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spiritand scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DISCLOSURE

The various aspects of the subject disclosure are now described withreference to the annexed drawings, wherein like reference numeralscorrespond to similar elements throughout the several views. It shouldbe understood, however, that the drawings and detailed descriptionhereafter relating thereto are not intended to limit the claimed subjectmatter to the particular form disclosed. Rather, the intention is tocover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling withinthe spirit and scope of the claimed subject matter.

As used herein, the terms “component,” “system” and the like areintended to refer to a computer-related entity, either hardware, acombination of hardware and software, software, or software inexecution. For example, a component may be, but is not limited to being,a process running on a processor, a processor, an object, an executable,a thread of execution, a program, and/or a computer. By way ofillustration, both an application running on a computer and the computercan be a component. One or more components may reside within a processand/or thread of execution and a component may be localized on onecomputer and/or distributed between two or more computers or processors.

The word “exemplary” is used herein to mean serving as an example,instance, or illustration. Any aspect or design described herein as“exemplary” is not necessarily to be construed as preferred oradvantageous over other aspects or designs.

Furthermore, the disclosed subject matter may be implemented as asystem, method, apparatus, or article of manufacture using standardprogramming and/or engineering techniques to produce software, firmware,hardware, or any combination thereof to control a computer or processorbased device to implement aspects detailed herein. The phrase “computerreadable media” can include but is not limited to magnetic storagedevices (e.g., hard disk, floppy disk, magnetic strips . . . ), opticaldisks (e.g., compact disk (CD), digital versatile disk (DVD) . . . ),smart cards, and flash memory devices (e.g., card, stick). Additionallyit should be appreciated that a carrier wave can be employed to carrycomputer-readable electronic data such as those used in transmitting andreceiving electronic mail or in accessing a network such as the Internetor a local area network (LAN). Of course, those skilled in the art willrecognize many modifications may be made to this configuration withoutdeparting from the scope or spirit of the claimed subject matter.

Referring now to the drawings wherein like reference numerals correspondto similar elements throughout the several views and, more specifically,referring to FIG. 1, the present disclosure will be described in thecontext of an exemplary system 10 that includes a session server 12, adatabase 22 and a plurality of personal computing devices collectivelyidentified by numeral 14 that are linked together via the internet orsome other communication network 20. The server 12 can be any type ofcomputer server and may be located at the same location as any of thepersonal computing devices 14 or at a location remote from all of thedevices 14. The server 12 may include a single server or may include twoor more servers that cooperate to perform various aspects of the presentdisclosure. Although not illustrated, server 12 includes, among otherthings, one or more processors for carrying out methods and processesthat are consistent with at least some aspects of the presentdisclosure. Server 12 may be operated by an entity that employs theusers of devices 14 or may be operated by a third party provider or,where processes performed by server 12 are performed by two or moreservers, different entities may be responsible for performing differentsteps or sub-processes of the methods and processes described herein.

While database 22 is shown as a separate component in FIG. 1, it shouldbe appreciated that database 22 may be provided as part of one or moreof the servers 12. The database 22 may either be at the location of theserver 12 or at a remote location in which case the database would beaccessible via the network link 20. As shown, database 22 includes asession database 24. An exemplary simplified session database 24 isshown in FIG. 8 and is described in greater detail hereafter. Inaddition to the session database 24, session software 28 is stored ondatabase 22 that can be run to perform the disclosed methods andprocesses and E-mail/scheduling software 29 is also stored on database22.

Unless indicated otherwise, hereafter it will be assumed that a singleentity operates the E-mail and scheduling software 29 and the sessionsoftware 28 and that each of the device 14 users uses the E-mail andscheduling software 29 to facilitate E-mail communications and toelectronically calendar events, sessions, etc. Nevertheless, it shouldbe appreciated that in at least some cases different device 14 users maybe associated with different entities and therefore different users mayuse different E-mail and personal calendaring software to facilitatecommunication and calendaring functionality described hereafter.

Referring still to FIG. 1, the computing devices 14 may take any ofseveral different forms including but not limited to personal or desktopcomputers, laptop computers, tablet type computers, smart phones,personal digital assistants, etc. In FIG. 1 several laptops 14 are shownin a phantom box 26 to indicate that those laptops are at a singlelocation. For example, the location corresponding to box 26 maycorrespond to a conference room within a facility owned by an employerof persons that use devices 14. The devices 14 in FIG. 1 that arelocated outside box 26 are assumed to be remotely located fromconference space 26 and from each other.

According to one session scheduling function that is consistent with atleast some aspects of the present disclosure, when server 12 runssession software 28, server 12 can be used to schedule and manageconference sessions involving conferees at remote locations. Morespecifically, the session software 28 can use E-mails from system usersto schedule and manage conference sessions so. To this end, at least oneunique session domain name is assigned to server 12 such that allE-mails addressed to the session domain name are received by server 12.Different qualifiers (i.e., the portion of an E-mail address before the“@” sign) in received emails are used by server 12 to initiate differentsession management functions. For instance, where the term “session” isthe domain name, the qualifier “schedule” may be added to the domain toprovide the address “schedule@session.com” where the server isprogrammed to recognize a request to schedule a new session whenever anE-mail addressed to the address “schedule@session.com” is received. Asanother example, whenever an E-mail addressed to “response@session.com”is received, server 12 may be programmed to recognize a response to aninvitation to participate in a session and may process the responseaccordingly. As still one other instance, whenever an E-mail addressedto “AddFile@session.com” is received, server 12 may be programmed torecognize that files attached to the E-mail are to be added to anexisting session queue and may process the response accordingly. Asanother instance, an E-mail to “starsession@session.com” may causeserver 12 to start an immediate session and E-mail to “join@session.com”may cause server 12 to add a conferee to an ongoing session. Many otherE-mail addresses may be associated with other session functionality.

Referring now to FIG. 2, a process 30 for using an E-mail system toschedule a conferencing session that may be performed via any one of thepersonal computing devices 14 shown in FIG. 1 is illustrated. At processblock 32, a device user opens an E-mail program and selects a “New” icon(not illustrated) via an E-mail menu in order to create a new E-mailmessage. Referring also to FIG. 3, when the “new” E-mail icon isselected, a new E-mail window 62 is opened as in any conventional E-mailsoftware application. As shown in FIG. 3, the new E-mail window 62includes standard E-mail fields including a tool bar field 64, a “Send”field 66, a “To” or target field 68, a “Regarding” field 70, an“Attachments” field 72 and a message field 76. Although the tool barfield 64 is shown as blank, it should be appreciated that variousselectable icons may be presented within field 64 including a fontselection icon, an address book icon, standard tools for attachingfiles, etc. The send icon 66 can be selected to send an E-mail afterother fields have been filled in.

The “To” field 68 is used to indicate recipients of the E-mail message.As shown, one of the recipients listed in field 68 is“schedule@session.com”. Here, the domain portion of the address (e.g.,session.com) corresponds to session server 12 in FIG. 1 and thequalifier or mailbox portion “schedule” corresponds to session serverscheduling functionality. In at least some embodiments the E-mailaddress feature can be used to select conferees to be added to an invitelist for a session in the normal way that the address feature would beused to select recipients of an E-mail. The other recipients in field 68include other potential conferees that are being invited to the sessioncorresponding to E-mail 62. In FIG. 2, the step of addressing the E-mailto the session server schedule mailbox is shown at process block 34. Thestep of addressing the E-mail to other invited conferees is shown atprocess block 36.

At block 38, the initiating conferee adds information to message field76 and other fields. In at least some embodiments it is contemplatedthat the initiating conferee may simply add conversational text to block76 that includes information required to schedule a conference session.Here, it is assumed that server 12 would be able to parse theconversational text to glean information needed to schedule the session.The exemplary information in field 76 in FIG. 3 indicates the date, timeand duration of the session to be scheduled. Other descriptiveinformation may be added to the “Regarding” field 70 as shown. At block40, the initiating conferee attaches files to the E-mail usingconventional E-mail file attachment tools from tool bar field 64. InFIG. 3, seven exemplary files 74 are shown attached in field 72. Thefiles 74 maybe any type of digital content including documents, images,video clips, audio clips, spreadsheets, presentation documents,applications, etc.

Continuing, at block 42, any additional information such as a moredetailed message, an agenda for a session, etc., may be added to theE-mail in field 76. After the initiating conferee is satisfied with theinformation entered into the E-mail fields in FIG. 3, at block 44, theconferee selects “send” icon 66 to transmit the E-mail to session server12.

Referring now to FIG. 4, a process 90 that may be performed by server 12when any E-mail is received from one of the computing devices 14 isshown. At block 92, server 12 receives an E-mail. At blocks 94, 96, 98,203 and 208 server 12 identifies the address of the received E-mail anddelivers the E-mail to an appropriate E-mail box associated withsoftware for implementing various session functionality. At block 94where the mail is a request to schedule a new session (i.e., addressedto “schedule@session.com”), control passes down to block 99. At block99, server 12 schedules a new session per the E-mail information and atblock 100, server 12 creates a session record for the new session.

Referring FIG. 7, an exemplary session database 24 including a pluralityof session records is illustrated. An exemplary first session record isidentified by numeral 220 and other session records are representedbelow record 220. As shown, the exemplary session record 220 includesdate, time and session title fields collectively identified by numeral222 that specify the date, time and duration of the session associatedwith the record 220. In addition, the exemplary record 220 includes alist including the session initiator and conferees invited to thesession at 224 and status indicators (see 226) for each of the conferees224 indicating a current “intent to attend” status. The exemplarycurrent statuses include an “Initiator” status corresponding to theconferee that initiated the session, an “Accepted” status indicatingconferees that were invited that have already accepted and scheduled thesession, a “Pending” designation indicating conferees that have beeninvited but have yet to accept the invitation to participate in thesession, a “Tentative” designation indicating invitees that haveresponded with a tentative response and a “Decline” designationindicating that an invitee declined an invitation to the session.

In addition to including conferee and status information, the sessionrecord 220 also includes a session file queue 228 which stores all ofthe files that have been added by either the initiator or one of theconferees to be shared during the session once the session commences.Consistent with the above example, the queue 228 lists seven filescorresponding to the session initiator. In addition, other files 8through 15 are shown listed in the queue and associated with otherconference invitees. Two of the other files, File 14 and File 15, havebeen added to the queue by one of the tentative conferees. In at leastsome cases even declining conferees may add files to the queue to beconsidered by others during a session.

In at least some cases server 12 may arrange files in the queue based onthe status indicators associated with conferees that added the files tothe queue. For instance, files may be arranged with initiator filesfirst, accepted conferees second, tentative conferees third and declinedconferees last. Other factors may be used to arrange queue files. Forinstance, file types may be used to arrange files, confereecharacteristics (e.g., titles) may be used to arrange files, file namesmay be used, combinations of factors may be used. In some casesconferees may be able to designate the order of files in the queue.

Other information may be stored in the session record 220 such asmessages received from conferees in E-mails corresponding to thesession, an agenda if provided by the initiator or some other confereethat was invited, etc. Although other session records are shown insimplified form in FIG. 8, it should be appreciated that each of theother session records would include information similar to thatdescribed above with respect to record 220.

Referring once again to FIGS. 1 and 4, after the session record has beencreated at block 100 or simultaneously therewith, server 12 generatesand transmits invite E-mails to each of the session invitees listed inthe session record. An exemplary invite E-mail that may be constructedby server 12 using information gleaned from the initiating E-mail isshown in FIG. 6 and is described in greater detail below. At block 104,server 12 transmits the invite E-mails to the invitees after whichcontrol passes back up to block 92 as shown.

Although not shown, when a conferee initiates scheduling a conference asdescribed above, in addition to scheduling a session in the sessiondatabase 24, the session software may also interact with scheduling orelectronic calendaring software used by the initiating conferee tomaintain a personal schedule. For instance, when a session is scheduled,server 12 may transmit a meeting or session notice to the servermaintaining the initiating conferee's E-mail system requesting that asession be added to the conferee's personal schedule. Similarly, when aninvited conferee accepts or tentatively accepts an invitation toparticipate in a session as described hereafter, server 12 may transmita meeting or session notice to the server maintaining the E-mail systemused by the invited conferee requesting that the session be added to theconferee's personal schedule. In the present case it is assumed thatserver 12 operates all E-mail and scheduling software for all potentialconferees (see FIG. 1) and therefore session scheduling on personalcalendars can be completed by server 12 itself.

Referring still to FIG. 1 and now also to FIG. 5, a process 130 forhandling a session invite E-mail that may be performed by a sessioninvitee's computing device 14 is illustrated. At block 132, theinvitee's device 14 receives an invite E-mail from server 12 andpresents the invite E-mail in an E-mail window on the invitee's device14. Referring also to FIG. 6, the exemplary invite E-mail 162 includes“Accept”, “Decline” and “Tentative” icons 171, 173 and 175,respectively, a “To” or target field 176, a “Regarding” field 178, an“Attachments” field 180 and a “Message” field 182. As in conventionalscheduling and E-mail systems, the Accept, Decline and Tentative icons171, 173 and 175 can be selected to indicate a desire to accept ascheduled session, decline a scheduled session or tentatively accept ascheduled session. The target field 176 is automatically filled in witha mailbox address corresponding to session server 12 and morespecifically corresponding to functionality to be performed when aninvitee responds to a session invite. To this end, the exemplary addressin target field 176 includes “response@sesion.com”. The “Regarding”field 178 provides a title for the session which, in most cases, willsimply include the identifier provided by the conference initiator“Regarding” field 70 as shown in FIG. 3.

Referring still to FIG. 6, the “Attachments” field would initially beblank when a conference invitee opens the invite E-mail. In at leastsome embodiments, files can be added by the invitee to the “Attachments”field 180 to add those files to the session queue for subsequent accessduring a session. In FIG. 6, two exemplary files, “File 8” and “File 9”,are shown attached in field 180.

Message field 182 includes a message composed by session server 12inviting the invitee to join the conference session that has beenscheduled. To this end, the composed message indicates the identity ofthe session initiator as well as the day and time at which the sessionis to take place at 186. In addition, the composed message indicates thenames of conferees invited to the session at 188 which can be gleanedfrom the E-mail addresses of the invitees received in the initiatingE-mail by the server 12. The message field 182 may also include iconscorresponding to each one of the files currently in the system queue at190. The exemplary files at 190 include files 1 through 7. Here, it iscontemplated that any one or a subset of the file icons at 190 may beselected for accessing those files to gain additional information aboutwhat is to be presented or discussed at the scheduled session. Themessage field 182 also includes an invitation at 192 and instructions tothe invitee for adding additional files to the attachment field 180 thatcan be added to the queue. In at least some cases a session identifiermay also be included in the invite E-mail. For instance, in FIG. 6,numeral 194 indicates a session identifier “Session 00001” at the end ofthe “Regarding” field. Other identifiers may be provided in other fieldsor may simply be associated with but not presented as part of the inviteE-mail.

Referring still to FIG. 6 and again to FIG. 5, if any of the responseicons (e.g., accept, tentative, decline) is selected at block 140,control passes down to block 142 where the response E-mail istransmitted to server 12.

Referring again to FIG. 4, where an invitation response is received byserver 12, control passes through blocks 92, 94 and 96 to block 105where server 12 uses the session identifier (see 194 in FIG. 6) toidentify the session associated with the response. At block 106, server12 uses the response to update the session record 220 shown in FIG. 7 bychanging the status indictor in column 226 for the respondent. Filesfrom the response E-mail are added to the session record queue to block110 after which control passes back up to block 92.

After a session is scheduled and prior to commencement, any conferee maybe able to add files to the session queue at any time, even afteraccepting a session. To this end, see FIG. 8 that shows an exemplaryE-mail template 200 that may be used to add files to a queue. E-mailtemplate 200 is essentially identical to the conventional or standardE-mail format shown in FIG. 3 including a tool bar, a target field 68, a“Regarding” field, an “Attachment” field, a message field and a “Send”icon. Here, the “AddFile@session.com” address has been entered intotarget field 68 and four files have been attached to “Attachments” field70.

Referring again to FIG. 4, when an add file E-mail as in FIG. 8 isreceived, server 12 control passes through block 96 to block 98 and onto block 101. At block 101 server 12 attempts to identify which sessionthe files attached to the E-mail are related to. To this end, a confereesending files to attach to an already scheduled session, while knowingthat she is scheduled for a session, may have no way of independentlydistinguishing the session from other sessions. In some cases a confereemay be scheduled to participate in multiple sessions furthercomplicating the task of identifying which session queue files should beadded to.

Where a conferee adding files to a queue is only associated with onescheduled session, server 12 may be programmed to use confereeidentification information from the received E-mail to identify thesession at block 101. In some cases, server 12 may simply move on toblock 110 once a single session is identified. In other cases, server 12may generate and transmit a confirmation E-mail to the conferee thatsent the add file E-mail to confirm the conferees intent to add thefiles to the identified session queue. Where server 12 identifies two ormore sessions that the conferee is scheduled to participate in, server12 may generate and transmit a query E-mail asking the conferee toselect one of the plurality of sessions to which the files should bequeue for. Referring still to FIG. 4, at block 110, files attached tothe received E-mail are added to an appropriate queue.

While not shown, a process similar to that described above may besupported for using an E-mail system to remove files from a sessionqueue. For instance, another E-mail address associated with server 12may be “RemoveFile@session.com”. In response to this type of E-mail,server 12 may identify a session associated with the conferee andprovide an E-mail including attached files previously added to thesession by the conferee where files can be removed by detaching thosefiles from the E-mail and re-sending the E-mail to server 12 to updatethe queue.

In some embodiments it is contemplated that a session initiator may wantto immediately start a conferencing session instead of scheduling asession for a future time period. To immediately start a conferencingsession, a process similar to that described above with respect toscheduling a session may be performed. The primary differences betweenstarting an immediate session and scheduling a session would be that, tostart an immediate session, an E-mail would be transmitted to adifferent server mailbox, such as, for instance,“startsession@session.com” and the initiator would not have to provideinformation describing the session start time or date. Referring againto FIG. 4, at block 98 if the received E-mail is an immediate startsession E-mail, control may pass to block 203 and then to process block204. At block 204, server 12 creates a new session record (see againFIG. 7) and instantiates a queue by adding files attached to the E-mailto the queue. At block 205, server 12 generates invite emails toinvitees listed in the target field of the session initiating E-mailwhich are transmitted at block 206. At block 207, server 12 opens asession in a browser screen on the initiator's computing device 14, usesqueue files from the session record to populate a file queue in thebrowser and adds the initiator to a conferee representation field in thebrowser after which control passes back to block 92.

If an invitee accepts an immediate session via an invite E-mail,referring still to FIG. 4, when the response E-mail is received, controlpasses to block 208 and on to block 209. At block 209, server 12 updatesthe session record to reflect acceptance. At block 210 server 12 addsany files attached to the response E-mail to the queue. At block 211server 12 provides a browser interface to the invitee that accepted theinvite and then control passes back up to block 92 in FIG. 4.

In at least some embodiments an immediate session invite E-mail mayinclude a simple selectable icon or the like enabling a conferee join anongoing session with selection of a single icon. To this end, seeexemplary invite E-mail template 212 in FIG. 9 that includes “Join now”,“Join in 10 minutes”, and “Decline” icons 213, 214 and 215,respectively, an “Attachments” field 217, a “Regarding” field 216 and amessage field 218. Server 12 generates the invite message in field 218automatically. Server 12 also automatically generates the text in field216 indicating the nature of the session. Files can be attached in field217 to add to the queue. The invitee can immediately join the sessionand open a browser interface by selecting icon 213. The invitee candecline the invite by selecting icon 215. The invitee can indicate adesire to join the session in 10 minutes by selecting icon 214. If icon214 is selected, an automatic message would be sent to all confereesalready linked to the session notifying them that the one conferee willbe delayed.

In at least some embodiments it is contemplated that the informationincluded in an E-mail to the session server to initiate (e.g., scheduleor start) a new conference session may not include all of theinformation required to initiate the session. For example, a plainEnglish E-mail composed by a conference initiator to initiate a sessionmay not indicate the date on which the session is to be scheduled or maynot indicate conference invitees for the session. In fact, in at leastsome cases it is contemplated that the process of initiating a sessionmay be started by simply sending a start or schedule E-mail to sessionserver 12 without adding any information to other E-mail fields.

Where insufficient information for initiating a session is receivedwithin an E-mail, in at least some cases, session server 12 will beprogrammed to request missing information from the initiating conferee.To this end, a sub-process 230 that may be substituted for a portion ofthe process shown in FIG. 4 for obtaining additional requiredinformation for initiating a session from an initiating conferee isillustrated in FIG. 10.

Referring to FIGS. 1, 4 and 10, after server 12 determines that areceived E-mail is related to a new and unscheduled session, controlpasses to block 232 in FIG. 10. At decision block 232, server 12determines whether or not the minimum required session information forscheduling a session is included in the received E-mail. Where theminimum required session information is included in the E-mail, controlpasses to block 99 in FIG. 4 where the process described abovecontinues.

At block 232, if the minimum required session information has not beenreceived, control passes to process block 234 where server 12 generatesand transmits a follow-up E-mail to the initiating conferee requestingadditional information. Although not shown, the follow-up E-mail mayinclude a precanned reply E-mail with specific fields for enteringrequired information. For instance, where an initiating conferee failedto indicate the date on which a session should be scheduled, theprecanned reply E-mail may include a field labeled “date” that includesspace for entering the session date. As another example, where theinitiating E-mail failed to identify at least one other conferenceinvitee, the reply E-mail may include a field labeled “invitees” andspace for entering E-mail or other identifier information for invitedconferees. After block 234, control passes back up to block 92 in FIG. 4where the server waits to receive another E-mail message and the processdescribed above is repeated. Although not shown, a subprocess similar tothe subprocess shown in FIG. 10 may also be performed whenever an E-mailto start an immediate session is received where the E-mail does notinclude all information to start the session.

Even in cases where a conference session initiation E-mail includes allof the information required to initiate a conference, in at least somecases, server 12 may be programmed to send a confirmation E-mail to aninitiating conferee to confirm that the session should be schedule. Tothis end, see the exemplary sub-process 250 in FIG. 11 that may besubstituted for a portion of the process shown in FIG. 4 for generatinga confirmation E-mail for an initiated session. Referring also to FIGS.1 and 4, after server 12 recognizes that a received E-mail is related toa new and yet to be scheduled session at block 96, control may pass toblock 258 in FIG. 11. At block 258, server 12 uses the informationgleaned from the initiation E-mail received at block 94 to generate aconfirmation E-mail to be sent to the initiating conferee. Here, theconfirmation E-mail includes all of the details related to the sessionto be initiated and would include an “accept” icon or the like to beaccepted by the initiating conferee. At block 260, server 12 monitorsfor a return E-mail in response to the confirmation E-mail. Where areturn E-mail is not received, control passes to block 262 where thesession is canceled after which control passes back up to block 92 inFIG. 4 where the process described above continues to cycle. At block260, if a return E-mail is received, control passes to block 99 in FIG.4 where the process described above continues to cycle.

After a session has been scheduled and invitees have responded, a fewminutes before (e.g., 15 minutes) a session is scheduled to commence, anE-mail may be transmitted to each of the conferees that agreed toparticipate with a selectable hyperlink that, when selected, opens abrowser page associated with the session (see again, for instance, FIG.9). In addition, upon selection of the selectable hyperlink, server 12may start downloading all of the session queue files to the device usedto select the hyperlink so that access thereto can be expedited duringthe session. Thus, for instance, in the present example, referring againto FIG. 7, all of the files in the session 00001 queue 228 may bedownloaded to each of the user devices 14 as those devices link toserver 12 to participate in the session. In the alternative, the queuefiles may be downloaded to each device 14 automatically before thesession commences, at the time associated with the scheduled session orjust after the session commences. In still other cases session queuefiles may be downloaded to user devices 14 hours before a sessioncommences so that conferees have the chance to review session filesprior to the session commencing. Downloading or caching files on alluser devices should expedite the process of accessing al session contentduring a session.

Referring now to FIG. 12, an exemplary session browser page isillustrated in a window 270. The exemplary page includes a session titleor name field 272, a common or sharing field or window 274, a sessionfile or document queue 276, conferee icons presented in a conferee queueidentified by numeral 278, an “Add File” icon 280 and an add conferee orinvitee icon 282. The session title field 272 includes the title of thesession and is used by conferees to confirm that they have linked intoan intended session. Any currently shared visual content or filesincluding documents, videos, images, application output, etc., ispresented in sharing field 274. In at least some cases it iscontemplated that the content within field 274 will be the same for allconferees participating in a session. In these cases the difficultiesassociated with trying to make sure all conferees are viewing or atleast have access to the same content during a session can beeliminated.

The conferee icons in queue 278 include a separate icon for each of theconferees that participates in a session. In at least some embodimentseach conferee icon 278 will include an image of the associated confereeor some other identifier such as a name, an office association, etc. Inat least some cases different colors will be associated with differentconferees and the icons 278 may have some colored characteristicassociated with the conferee color. For instance, the border box arounda first conferee icon may be red, the border around the second icon maybe blue, the border around a third icon may be green, etc. Actionsperformed by conferees that appear on the browser page or informationassociated with conferees may have subtle color related earmarks to helpconferees distinguish activities by other conferees. For instance if aconferee uses a drawing tool or the like to highlight content in a filepresented in field 274, the highlighting may be color coded to theconferee's related color (e.g., the conferee associated with red mayhighlight in red, the conferee associated with blue may highlight inblue, etc.).

Referring still to FIG. 12, thirteen files are shown in queue 276. Ifthe queue includes more than the illustrated files, scrolling arrowscould be provided enabling conferees to move up and down in the queue toaccess other files. The illustrated thirteen files include files 1-7added to the queue in the above example by the session initiator, files8 and 9 added to the queue by a first conferee Jennifer White and files10 through 13 add to the queue by a second conferee Pat Smith (see againFIG. 8). In at least some embodiments the file icons in queue 276 may becolor coded to indicate which conferee added the files to the queue. Tothis end, three phantom boxes 282, 284 and 286 are shown about the filesubsets added to the queue by the conference initiator, Jennifer White,and Pat Smith, respectively. Here, the borders about each group 282 filemay be highlighted red, the borders about each group 284 file may behighlighted blue and the borders about each group 286 file may behighlighted green to indicate conferees that added the files.

In at least some embodiments, regardless of which conferee added a fileto the session queue, any conferee may be able to select any file fromthe queue to open the file for common viewing in common field or sharingwindow 274. Standard graphical interface tools may be used to selectfiles. For instance, a mouse controllable pointer icon may be used todrag a file into sharing window 274, to double click on a file icon toopen the file in window 273, etc. See FIG. 13 that shows File 8 openedin window 274. Here, the term “drag” is used to refer to selecting theiconic representation of a file from queue 276 and moving a pointingdevice from that selected point to the sharing window 274 where, uponrelease, an instance of the file or document is opened in the sharingspace 274, where the iconic representation of the file in queue 276persists within the queue. In other parts of this specification the term“drag” or the term “dragging” are used in a similar fashion where anicon dragged to another location still persists and the originallocation while an instance of a file, object or other data constructassociated with the icon is then opened at the end location of thedragging action. In these cases, while an original object may not moveduring the dragging action, In some other cases in this specificationthe term “drag” may refer to actually moving a selected object from onelocation to another.

The feature that enables any conferee to take session control by openinga file in common field 274 is referred to generally as egalitariancontrol because no one conferee controls who has control at any time. Ineffect, any conferee can assume control of the common field 274 at anytime and all conferees see the same content or file in the common fieldat all times and any conferee can open any queue file regardless ofwhich conferee added the file to the queue.

When a file is opened in common or sharing window 274, the file icon inqueue 276 is highlighted or otherwise visually distinguished from theother file icons in the queue. Where an open file has several pages asin a Power Point presentation or the like, scrolling icons 275 and 277(see FIG. 13) may be presented for moving back and forth within the openfile to show other pages. In at least some cases, while the file icon inqueue 274 may be color coded to indicate the conferee that added thefile to the queue, a border about common field 274 may be color coded tothe conferee that opened the file currently presented in field 274.Thus, for instance, where a first conferee is associated with the colorred and a second conferee is associated with the color blue, if thesecond conferee added file 8 to the queue and the first conferee openedfile 8 in the common field 274, the file 8 icon in queue 274 would bebordered blue while the border about the open file 8 in field 274 may bered.

In at least some embodiments any conferee may be able to open any filein the queue in either the common field 274 or in a private window forindependent and private viewing and consideration. To this end, see FIG.14 where, when the file 6 icon is selected by a conferee on theconferee's display (i.e., via touch, mouse controlled cursers, etc.), anoption tool or window 300 is opened giving the conferee the option toeither open file 6 in the common field 274 by selecting icon 302 or toopen file 6 in a private viewing window by selecting icon 304. Selectionof icon 302 opens the selected file in common window 274. Selection oficon 304 opens the selected file in a private viewing window as shown inFIG. 15.

Here, private means that only the conferee that elected to open the filein the private window can see the instance of the file in the privatewindow (i.e., no other conferee sees another conferee's private window).If two or more conferees open the same file in private windows at thesame time, each can independently view a different instance of the filein their own private window. Similarly, if a file is opened in thecommon field and a conferee opens the same file in a private window, theconferee sees a different instance of the file than the instance viewedby all conferees in the common window. Because different conferees canview different instances of the same file at the same time, differentconferees can view different parts of the same file at the same time.For instance, a first conferee may be viewing a first page of a PowerPoint presentation while a second conferee is viewing a tenth page ofthe same Power Point presentation at the same time.

Referring still to FIG. 15, while viewing a file in a private window330, a conferee may select a share icon 332 to share the privatelyviewed file with other conferees in the sharing window 274. In at leastsome cases when a privately viewed file is shared, the view of the filewhen sharing is commenced will be the same as the view in the privatewindow. Thus, for instance, where a conferee is viewing a tenth page ofa document privately when sharing commences, the shared instance of thedocument will be presented with the tenth page open for viewing in field274.

The browser representation in FIG. 12 is provided in a software windowand therefore other windows can be opened up simultaneously if a device14 user wants to view content that is not in a session queue and that isindependent of the content viewed in common field 274. For instance, ifa device 14 user wants to review a non-queued word processor documentindependent of the file opened in field 274, the user can simply openthe document in a different private window either over the top ofbrowser window 270 or to the side thereof if window 270 is reduced insize. To this end, see FIG. 16 where a private window 350 is shownopened over the browser interface.

In at least some embodiments server 12 enables conferees to add files toor remove their files from a conference queue during a session. Forinstance, referring again to FIG. 16, when a conferee opens a file thatis not already in the queue in a private window 350, server 12 mayautomatically provide an “Add To Session” icon 352 in the private windowthat, when selected, causes the file opened in the private window to beadded to the session queue 276. It is contemplated that files added tothe queue will be added sequentially and that any file added will becolor coded per the colors associated with specific conferees. When afile is added to the queue, instances of the file are immediately andautomatically cached in memory associated with each of the devices 14 sothat the newly added file can be rapidly accessed when required.

Referring again to FIG. 12, the Add File icon 280 may also be used toadd or delete queue files by name. Referring also to FIG. 17, when icon280 is selected, in at least some embodiments, a queue management windowor tool 340 may be opened for adding files to or deleting files from thesession queue. The exemplary window 340 in FIG. 16 includes two lists offiles including files 324 that have already been added by the confereeto the session queue and files 326 that have yet to be added to thequeue. One or more files in either list can be selected to highlight thefile icons and then arrow icons 360 or 362 can be selected to move theselected files from one list to the other. After a conferee is satisfiedwith the conferees files in the queue, the conferee can select an “OK”icon 346 to make the file swap into and/or out of the queue. When a newfile is added to the queue 274, instances of the new file are cached oneach of the linked devices 14. When a file is removed from the queue, inat least some embodiments the instances of the removed file in thedevice 14 caches are deleted therefrom.

In still other embodiments a session application may be downloaded ontoa conferee's device and used to add files or other content to a sessionqueue at any time. For instance, a session application may be downloadedto a smart phone or tablet type device that integrates with devicecontent posting applications. For instance, here, after a picture istaken with a camera, if a conferee wants to post the picture to asession queue, the conferee can select a “Post” icon presented by thecamera software interface to access sharing options for the obtainedimage like “Message”, “E-Mail”, “Twitter”, “Facebook”, etc. Once thesession software is integrated with the posting application, anotheroption called “Session” may be provided as a selectable icon for sharingby posting to a session queue. Here, if the “Session” icon is selected,the image may be transmitted to the session server 12 with confereeidentifying information. Where the conferee is only associated with asingle scheduled conference, the image may be added to the queueautomatically. If the conferee posting the image is associated with morethan one scheduled session, server 12 may respond with a query aboutwhich session queue to add the image to.

This simple application based process of adding an image to a sessionmay be performed either prior to a session or during a session. Forinstance, if a conferee has a hard copy image that the conferee wishesto share with others during the session, the conferee may take an imageof the hard copy with the conferee's device 14 and post the imageessentially real time to the queue for sharing. Camera videos can beshared and posted to a session queue in the same fashion. As anotherexample, the session posting option may also be used to share a newsarticle, an internet link, a blog site, etc. To this end, the sameposting icon can be presented via a smart phone, tablet device or anyother type of device and may be selected to access a session postingicon to add any content to a session queue.

Referring again to FIG. 12, other conferees can be invited to join anongoing session by selecting icon 282. When icon 282 is selected,referring also to FIG. 18, a conferee adding tool or window 400 may beopened including a field 402 for identifying others to be invited tojoin the ongoing session and a “Send Invite” icon for sending invites toconferees identified in field 402. A user's contact storing software(e.g., often E-mail software) may be used to identify potential contactsto invite via a search tool associated with field 402. In at least somecases an invite to another conferee to be added will be in an E-mailform as described above and the conferee will be able to join theongoing session by accepting the invite as described above.

Referring again to FIG. 1, it has been recognized that many personalcomputing devices like smart phones, tablets and even laptops haverelatively small display screens that make it difficult to view largeamounts of content. It has also been recognized that often times thereare large unused display screens in the vicinity of personal deviceusers that are not being utilized. In many cases large display screensare now being equipped with processors and software for running displayprograms and many are linked or linkable to computer and communicationnetworks so that the large displays are independently addressable.

Even where a display is not independently addressable, most displayshave input ports (e.g., HDMI) that can receive wireless processingdongles or devices (e.g., Chrome Cast by Google) that are independentlyaddressable. To this end, see FIG. 1 that shows a large display 420 in aspace (e.g., a conference room) corresponding to location 26 at whichseveral personal computing devices are located. Here, display 420 eitherhas a processor and a wireless transceiver built in or those componentsare provided in dongle 422 receivable in an HDMI or other type of portso that display 420 can be independently addressed for receiving contentto store and/or display.

In at least some embodiments, a conferee simply invites display 420 to asession in some fashion and the session server adds the invited displayto the session “conferees”. Thereafter the display operates like any ofthe personal device displays to present session information to confereesin a large format. For example, if a conference initiator knows theaddress corresponding to display 420 or can identify display 420 in someother way useable by server 12 to identify the display address, theaddress or identifier may simply be added to the target field in asession initiation E-mail. For instance, display 420 may be labeled witha persistent display identifier such as “Display 22”. Here, “Display 22”may be added to the target field in the initiation E-mail and may beuseable by server 12 to discern the display address which is added tothe list of session participants.

As another example, when dongle 422 is inserted in the display HDMI orother port, the dongle processor may boot up software to run anapplication that presents an address or associated identifier viadisplay 420 that could be added to an E-mail target field. Here, aconferee may simply enter the displayed address into an E-mail targetfield and transmit the E-mail to server 12.

As one other example, referring again to FIG. 18, when icon 282 isselected by a conferee to add a new conferee to an ongoing session,server 12 may cause the conferee's device to wirelessly or otherwiseidentify large screen/display options in the near vicinity and theoptions may be provided as an option list to be added to the inviteefield 400. To this end see the screen option icons 410, 412 and 414, anyof which may be selected to add a proximate large display to an ongoingsession.

Although not illustrated, it is contemplated that large screens couldalso be added to scheduled sessions in a similar fashion to effectivelyreserve the screens for future use during s scheduled session. Where ascreen is reserved for use during a future session, each screen or thesystem as a whole may be programmed to maintain its own schedule and toreport scheduled activities to conferees attempting to use the screensfor other sessions. For instance, if a particular screen is scheduled tobe used in 20 minutes for a first session, if another conferee attemptsto use the screen for a second session, the system may not allow use forthe second session or may provide notice that the screen is onlyavailable for the next 20 minutes or some sub-period thereof. Where thesystem does not allow a screen to be used because of a conflict withscheduled use, the system may provide notice that the screen cannot beused. In more complex systems the system may enable users to view anentire schedule for a screen on the display itself so that a user couldview open times and then select a specific time slot for scheduling andthe system could enable scheduling via the screen itself.

Referring now to FIG. 19, another exemplary screen shot showing asession display screen is illustrated that includes a session titlefield 270, a session queue 276, a conferee queue section or area 278, asharing window or field 274 and various intuitive tool icons. The titlefield 270 indicates the title of a session related to the screen shotwhich, in the exemplary illustration, is “New Product XX Development”.The session queue 276 includes icons that form a list of documents addedto the queue by different conferees. The exemplary list includes JPEGdocuments, PDF documents, flash video files, etc. For instance, a firstexemplary icon 500 indicates a JPEG document that was uploaded to thesystem by Bill Sargent that is titled “AirTouch Brochure”, an exemplaryflash video file icon is labeled 508, etc.

The conferee queue section 278, as described above, includes an imageicon of each of the conferees that is currently linked into the session.In some cases where conferee devices include video cameras (seeexemplary cameras 19 in FIG. 1), the images can be replaced by livestreaming video of each of the conferees. Where a common display screen420 for possible use by multiple local conferees includes a camera 852,one of the icons 510 may include an image of a general space in front ofthe common screen so that a scene including two or more local confereescan be presented in the conferee queue section 278. Where only some userdevices include video capturing capability and others do not, a hybridsystem is contemplated where video icons are provided when available andimages are provided for other conferees. Referring still to FIG. 19,sharing window 274 operates in a fashion similar to that describedabove.

When a page of a document or the like is opened in space 274, icons 514and 516 can be used to zoom out and zoom in on the image within thewindow. Icon 518 can be used to return to a full page image where thecurrently viewed page of the document is fully exposed in sharing space274 for viewing. Icon 520 can be selected to expand the sharing window274 to cover substantially the entire screen (e.g., so that the documentand conferee queues and the on screen tools are removed from thescreen). Icon 282 can be used to invite another conferee or anotherscreen to the session.

Referring still to FIG. 19, icon 280 is an upload icon which can be usedto add another document to the queue 276 at any time. For instance,referring also to FIG. 20, when icon 280 is selected, the system mayopen an upload window 530 that includes a list 534 of document sourcesfrom which a document may be retrieved, a receiving field 532 forreceiving a selected document and a “Choose File” icon 536. Exemplarysources in the list 534 include “My Computer”, “Gmail”, “Drop Box”“Box”, “Google Drive”, Sky Drive” and “Picassa”. Many other sources arecontemplated. To select a document to be added to the queue, a confereemay select one of the sources in list 534 followed by selection of icon536 to access all of the files within the selected source. Once a sourceis opened to view documents within the source, one of the documents maybe selected by either dragging the document icon into space 532 or bydouble clicking the document to indicate selection. Close icon 540 canbe selected to close upload window 530.

In the FIG. 19 embodiment, when one of the document icons in queue 276is selected via a double clicking action or the like, the documentassociated with the icon is opened in a private window or field asdescribed above and the selected document icon is highlighted orotherwise visually distinguished in some fashion. To this end, see FIG.21 where private window 550 has been opened and selected document icon500 is shown with a highlighting shadow to change the visual appearanceof the icon on the display. As can be seen, window 550 is relativelysmaller than sharing window 278 and in fact is opened, at leastinitially, within the queue field 276 so that the private window doesnot overlap or interfere with observation of the sharing window 274. Tomake room for the private window in the document queue, document iconsbelow the selected document icon are slid downward so that the privatewindow 550 can be opened within the queue without obstructing a view ofthe other document icons. While smaller than the sharing window 274, theprivate window is still large enough on most display screens for aconferee to comprehend the content in the window 550.

When the private window 550 is opened, additional tools for manipulatingthe document in the private window are provided at the top of thewindow. For example, in FIG. 21, the exemplary tools include a pagecounting and progression tool 552 and an expanding window icon 554. Tool552 includes arrow icons that can be selected to move backward andforward within the document opened in the private window. For instance,in the case of a PDF, the PDF may include seven pages and the currentlypresented page can be changed via the arrows. Tool 552 also reportswhich page of the total number of pages is currently being presented.The expanding window tool 554 can be selected to increase the size ofthe private window. To this end, see also FIG. 22 where the privatewindow 550′ has been expanded to a larger size for easier viewing. Here,the private window overlaps the sharing window 278 at least somewhat toaccommodate the larger size for more detailed viewing.

Other tools that may be presented for use in the private window arerepresented as icons in FIG. 22 and include a post note icon 673 and anannotation icon 698. The post note icon 673 can be selected to add anote to any one of the document pages as shown at 677. Each post note677 may be dragged about on the page presented in the private window viatouch, an on screen cursor, etc., and dropped at a location at which thenote should be posted. Annotation icon 698 can be selected to enableannotation or drawing tools such as the pen shown at 699 in FIG. 22 thatcan be moved via a mouse, touch of a user's finger or a stylus or insome other fashion to annotate a page in the private window. Annotationsand post notes are stored along with the pages on which they are appliedand can be removed and modified if desired. While tools 673 and 698 areshown presented as part of the larger private window 550′, those toolsmay also be provided as part of the smaller private window 550 shown inFIG. 21. A shrink window icon 530 is also provided along with theprivate window 550′ for shrinking larger window 550′ back down to thesize of smaller window 550.

Referring still to FIG. 22, when annotations (e.g., notes and markings)are added to a document page within private window 550′, in at leastsome embodiments those annotations may be added to all other instancedof the document maintained by the system regardless of whether or notthose instances are currently being viewed by any of the conferees. Forinstance, where five conferees are patched into a session and one of theconferees opens a private window and annotates the fifth page of a sevenpage document, the system may automatically add the same annotation tothe fifth page of each instance of the document maintained by thepersonal devices used by the other four conferees to participate in thesession even if none of the conferees is currently viewing the fifthpage of the document. In this manner any annotations or other commentsadded to documents within the queue can be annotated by anyone and anytime any of the documents is opened by any conferee, the annotations canbe viewed.

In other cases conferee annotations made on documents in the privatewindow will remain private and will never be shared with otherconferees. This private notation feature is useful as it would enableany conferee to think freely while taking notes on a document withoutconcern for how annotations may be perceived by others.

In still other cases conferee notes and annotations made on documents inthe private window may remain private until the conferee that authoredthe annotations moves a document or a page including the annotationsinto the sharing window 276. By enabling a conferee to control whenprivately authored notes are presented to others, the system may enablea conferee to reveal private thoughts at a staged time as opposed towhenever any other conferee independently views private thought.

In still other cases, notes and annotations made in a private window mayremain private and only be made public when a conferee takes someaffirmative step to publish those notes to the larger group. Forinstance, referring again to FIG. 22, if a conferee annotates or adds anote to a document page in private window 550′ and then moves thedocument to sharing window 274, the document may be moved to the sharingwindow and sent to other session linked devices without the annotationsor notes. In this case, if the document is still open in the privatewindow 550′, the conferee can use the notes in the private window totalk about the instance in the public sharing window 274. If, at somepoint, the conferee wants to share the notes or annotations on adocument page, a mechanism may be provided for doing so. For instance,in FIG. 22, a “Note Share” icon 551 in the private window 550′ may beselected to publish notes and annotations from an instance of a documentpage in the private window 550′ to an instance of the document page inthe sharing window 274. Similarly, icon 551 may be selected in someembodiments to publish notes and annotations to all instances of adocument page regardless of whether or not a page is currently viewed inthe sharing windows. Thus, for example, where annotations and notes areadded to a document page in a private window 550′, at least initiallythe annotations and notes may not be added to other instances of thepage cached by other session linked devices. Then, upon sharing notesvia icon 551, the annotations and notes may be transmitted to the othersession linked devices to be added to the other instances of the page.

Other ways to empower a conferee to control when private annotations andnotes are revealed to other conferees are contemplated. For instance,when a document including notes or annotations is moved to a sharedwindow, the system may be programmed to provide a pop up window thatpresents the option to either show the document with or withoutannotations and notes. Here, the pop up window may pop up only when anannotation authoring conferee moves a document to the sharing window insome cases.

In other cases the system may be programmed so that, whenever anyconferee moves a document to the sharing window, any conferee that hasprivately annotated an instance of the document being moved is presentedwith a pop up window to control if the private annotations should beshared. For instance, where five different conferees have privatelyannotated a ten page document in various ways, when any conferee movesan instance of the document to the sharing window, each of the fiveconferees that annotated the document may be presented with the pop upwindow for indicating if the private annotations should be shared. Hereand in other cases, one or any subset of the conferees may share theirprivate notes and if two or more share, the private notes of eachsharing conferee would be added to the document in the sharing windowand to each instance of the document stored by the system. In some casesthe annotations may be color coded to the conferees that added theannotations. For instance, where conferee images or videos in confereequeue 278 are highlighted with different colors, the annotations ornotes may be color coded to the conferees that added the annotated ornotes.

In still other cases separate notes and annotations on a document pagein a private window may be published individually or as a subset of alarger group of annotations on the page. To this ens, see again FIG. 22where one annotation 679 and one note 677 have been applied to a page inthe private window 550′. If the document is moved to the sharing window274, at least initially, the document may be presented in space 274without the note and without the annotation and the instance of thedocument in the private window 550′ will persist along with the note andannotation. Then, the conferee may discuss the instance of the documentin window 274 with linked conferees. After a few minutes, if theconferee decides she would like to share note 677 with the larger groupbut does not want to share annotation 679, the conferee may drag note677 to the sharing window 274 and drop the note in space 274. Upondropping the note, the note may be placed in the same relative locationin window 274 from which the note was moved in window 550. In othercases the note may be dragged to the “Note Share” icon 551 to place thenote on the page in the sharing window 274. Other tools for replicatinga note or an annotation on a document page in the sharing space 274 arecontemplated.

In some cases a tool for selecting more than one annotation or note butnot all on a page for publishing is contemplated. For instance, a lassotype selection tool may be provided so that, if there are fiveannotations on a page, a conferee can select two of the five by drawinga circle around the two. Thereafter the combined two annotations may bepublished together without the other three annotations.

Referring again to FIG. 19, a utilities icon 512 is also provided abovethe document queue that can be selected to further manage queuedocuments. In this regard, see FIG. 23 where icon 512 has been selectedand a download icon 670 and a trash icon 671 have been added to each ofthe document icons (e.g., 674) in the document queue. Download icon 670can be selected to download an associated document to a conferee's owncomputer outside the session browser. For instance, in the case of aPDF, selection of icon 670 causes a PDF viewer to open outside thesession browser and an instance of the selected PDF document to beopened in the viewer via a single action (e.g., selection of icon 670).The conferee can then privately store the open instance on theconferee's computer or perform any other function on the instance of thedocument (e.g., e-mail the document to someone else, annotate thedocument in a drawing program, run a tool like an optical characterrecognition program on the document, etc.). Any queue document can betrashed by selecting trash icon 671 associated with the document icon.

To open a document in sharing window 274, a conferee can select adocument icon from queue 276 and drag into window 274. Here, thedragging action will cause a ghost version of the document icon to movealong to window 274 while the original document icon remains in queue276.

As shown in FIG. 24, in at least some cases, when a conferee opens adocument in sharing window 274, the image or video icon showing theconferee that opened the document in the window may be highlighted orotherwise visually distinguished in some fashion (see cross-hatched iconat 691). The icon may only remain highlighted for a set period of time(e.g. 7 seconds) or may remain highlighted until another conferee movesa different document into the window 274, changes the page of thedocument within window 274 or performs some other function likeannotating or applying a note to a page in window 274. Thus, thehighlighted conferee icon may persistently indicate the last conferee tomove a document to space 274, the last conferee to annotate a documentin space 274 or the last conferee that performed any action in space274.

When a document is moved to space 274, the document icon in the queuemay be visually distinguished in some fashion. For instance, in FIG. 24,icon 500 corresponding to the document in space 274 is shown as crosshatched to indicate a change in color or some other visuallydistinguishing change. Compare the shadow box highlighting of icon 500in FIG. 21 which indicates a document opened in a private space with thecross hatched icon in FIG. 24 which indicates a document opened in thesharing window 274 where the different highlighting is to convey thefact that a document is opened in different windows. As described below,a single document may be opened in a private space and in the sharingspace 274 and both highlights (e.g. cross hatching and the shadow box)may be applied to a single icon. Thus, in FIG. 24, the highlighteddocument icon indicates which document is opened in the sharing window274 as well as the conferee that initially uploaded the document to thesession queue while the highlighted conferee icon 691 in the confereequeue may indicate the last conferee to perform any function withinsharing window 274.

Annotation, note and pointing tools may also be provided for use byconferees within the sharing window 274. To this end, see FIG. 24 wherea screen shot includes annotation tool icon 690, a pointing icon 710 anda post note icon 711. These icons 690, 710 and 711 would be provided toall conferees in at least some embodiments. To use annotation tool icon690, a conferee selects the icon 690 and is presented with an on screenpop up drawing window 695 that enables the conferee to select a drawingeffect. For instance, exemplary effects may include different thicknesslines, solid or spaced lines, different color lines, an eraser, etc. Theconferee can select a drawing effect and can then move a drawing icon692 about on the conferee's device display to annotate as shown at 694and 696.

In at least some cases, when any conferee annotates a document page insharing space 274, the annotations are added to each instance of thedocument page shown by each of the other session linked devicesessentially in real time and the annotations persist until they areerased. In other cases the annotations may be removed from a page whenthe document presented in space 274 is replaced with another document.In still other cases annotations may be removed when a page in space 274is replaced by another page in the same document or by another document.In still other cases at least one of the drawing tools may only resultin a temporary timed annotation. For instance, if the temporary drawingtool is used to apply annotation 696 in FIG. 24, the annotation may onlylast 7 seconds and then fade away. This temporary annotation featureenables conferees to point out some aspect of a display in common space274 on all screens for a short time and then removes the annotation sothat the page remains uncluttered. As in the case of the private windowannotation tools, annotations in sharing window 274 may be color codedto specific conferees (e.g., where the borders around conferee iconsassociated with Bill Sargent and Jamie White are red and blue,respectively, annotations by Bill and Jamie may be red and blue,respectively).

To use the post note tool 711, a conferee can select icon 711 causing apost note instance (not illustrated in FIG. 24 but see 677 in FIG. 22)to be presented in sharing window 274. The note can be dragged via apointing icon 593, the touch of a finger, etc., to a target location anddropped. When a note is dropped, in some cases a virtual keyboard may bepresented to enable the conferee to type in text for the note. In othercases the note instance may be enlarged and enable a conferee toscribble via a stylus, a finger tip, etc., on the face of the note toadd content. In this case, once the content has been added, the confereecan indicate completion and the note will be shrunk down to its originalsize (e.g., the conferee may signal completion by double tapping thenote). Notes may persist and may be mirrored on other session devicedisplays in any of the manners described above with respect toannotations.

Referring still to FIG. 24, at least some conferee devices 14 (see againFIG. 1) include a mouse or other device controlled pointing icon 593 forselecting or moving (e.g., dragging) other icons about on a conferee'sdevice display. When the pointing icon 593 is outside sharing window274, the pointing icon is private and its location is not presented onthe displays used by other session conferees. Here, however, in at leastsome cases, when a conferee moves a pointing icon 593 into sharingwindow 274 on the conferee's device display, the icon will appear in thesharing windows on other conferee display screens so that the confereecan point to distinct content or sections on a page. Each pointer iconin a shared window 274 is duplicated in all other shared windows. Thus,for instance, where four conferees have located their pointer icons inspace 274, each of the four would be shown in each of the sharingwindows on each display linked to the session. The pointing icons in atleast some embodiments will be color coded so that conferees cancomprehend which conferee is pointing at which sections of a sharedpage. Pointer tool icon 710 can be selected to switch from theannotation tool to the pointing tool.

Referring yet again to FIG. 24, a progression tool 562 akin to theprogression tool 552 described above is presented in sharing window 274for moving forward and backward within the document presented in space274. Any conferee can use tool 562 to advance or move backward within adocument.

Referring now to FIG. 25, an exemplary screen shot from a device linkedto a session is illustrated where a single document is opened in both aprivate window 570 and in the sharing window 274. The document iconcorresponding to the opened document is highlighted in cross hatch toindicate that the document is open in the sharing window and is alsohighlighted with a shadow box to indicate that the same document isopened in the private window 570. The progression tool 552 associatedwith the private window indicates that the instance of the document inthe private window is on page 5 of 7 while the progression tool 562associated with the sharing window 274 indicates that the instance ofthe document in the sharing window is on page 2 of 7. Again, privatewindow 570 is only presented to the specific conferee that opens thatwindow while any documents in sharing window 274 are mirrors in thesharing windows on other devices linked to the session.

Referring to FIG. 26, another screen shot of a session device display isshown where a first document is opened in the sharing window 274 and asecond document different from the first is opened in a private window590. Again, icon 500 is shown cross hatched to indicate that thedocument associated therewith is shown in the sharing window 274 whileicon 592 is shown with a shadow box to indicate that the documentassociated therewith is shown in the private window. As can be seen, theprivate window is always opened below the associated document icon tohelp a conferee understand which document is currently presented withinthe private window. Thus, in FIG. 26, if a conferee where to select adifferent document icon 594, the private window 590 under icon 592 wouldclose and a different private window (not illustrated) would be openedunder icon 594 for private viewing of the document associated with icon594 by the conferee.

Referring to FIG. 27, two partial screen shots 600 and 650 from twodifferent device displays used by first and second different confereeslinked to a single session are illustrated. In FIG. 27, a first documentassociated with icon 500 is open in the sharing windows 274 andtherefore icon 500 is shown in cross hatch in a manner consistent withthat described above in each of the two partial screen shots. Inaddition, the second conferee using screen 650 has opened the firstdocument associated with icon 500 in a private window 656 and thereforeicon 500 in screen shot 650 is also shown with a shadow box to indicateprivate viewing on the second conferee's display screen. Moreover, thefirst conferee using screen 600 has opened a second document associatedwith icon 604 in a private window 606 and therefore icon 606 in screenshot 600 is shown with a shadow box to indicate private viewing on thefirst conferee's display screen. In the illustrated embodiment theprivate viewing highlights (e.g., shadow boxes) are only presented onscreens used by conferees that opened a private screen and are notreplicated for others to see.

In some other embodiments it is contemplated that at least some subtleindication of what other conferees are doing during a session may bereplicated. For instance, referring again to FIG. 27, a shadow box (notillustrated) that is color coded to the first user using screen 600 maybe presented about document icon 660 on screen 650 to subtly indicate tothe second conferee using screen 650 that the first conferee currentlyhas the document associated with icon 660 open in a private window. Asimilar shadow box color coded to the second conferee may be presentedabout icon 500 on screen 600 to indicate to the first conferee usingscreen 600 that the second conferee has the document associated withicon 500 open in a private window. Here, while a subtle indication ispresented, conferees are not distracted by more invasive indication(e.g., by making private windows more public).

Thus, in at least some embodiments, while all conferees linked to asession see the same document and page in sharing windows 274 on theirdevices, each conferee has the option to view any queued document in aprivate window regardless of which document is in the sharing window andregardless of which documents are being viewed by other conferees inprivate windows.

In at least some cases it is contemplated that a conferee may not wantto share a document with others in a session prior to presenting thedocument at a specific time during the session for some reason. Forinstance, a conferee may want to reveal a document for the first timeduring a session to make a specific impression. As another instance, aconferee may be unclear if a document will be of interest during asession and may want the option to not reveal the document until itsimportance becomes apparent. For example, a conferee may want to haverelatively quick access to any of 40 documents during a session but maybelieve 5 of the 40 are important enough to be added to the commonpublic session queue. As yet another instance, a conferee may want toprivately gather many documents in a queue and then, prior to a session,may want to trim back the document set to a smaller subset for postingto the common public queue. To accommodate document gathering in aprivate way but nevertheless in a way that associates documents with asession, at least some embodiments of the disclosure contemplateproviding a private queue for each conferee in addition to the commonpublic queue where a conferee could select one or the other of theprivate and public queue for posting documents.

Referring to FIG. 28, a screen shot 670 including both a public queue672 and a private queue 674 are illustrated. Here, it is contemplatedthat when a conferee adds a document to a session queue, there may beone additional step requesting the conferee to identify if the documentis to be added to the conferee's private queue for the session or to thesession public queue. Where a conferee selects private, the document isadded sequentially to queue 674 and an associated document icon is onlypresented to the conferee associated with private queue 674. Where theconferee selects public, the document is added to queue 672 and anassociated document icon is added to the public queue for all confereeslinked to the session to see. Here, it is contemplated that a confereemay move a document from the private queue 674 to the public viadragging the document icon from queue 674 to queue 672. Here, icondragging results in actual movement of a document icon from queue 674 topublic queue 672. In addition, movement of an icon from queue 674 toqueue 672 causes the system to transmit a copy of the documentassociated with the icon to each device linked to the session to becached for quick access thereafter. Similarly, in some cases confereesthat posted documents to public queue 672 may be able to drag thosedocuments out of queue 672 to private queue 674 to remove thosedocuments from the public queue. In at least some embodiments a confereewould be prohibited from moving a document from the public queue thatwas posted there by a different conferee.

In addition to being able to present documents in sharing window 274, inat least some embodiments where conferee devices are equipped withcameras, video of conferees may be presented in space 274. To this endsee FIG. 29 where a dragging action is indicated by arrow 676 from aconferee icon 610 to space 274 to present video of the confereeassociated with icon 610 in space 274.

In particularly advantageous embodiments of the present disclosure,prior to commencement of a conferencing session or just thereafter, alldocuments in the public session queue are transmitted to confereedevices for caching. Where the system server is “aware” of devices thatwill be used during a session, the server may transmit documents priorto commencement of the session. For instance, if certain confereesalways use the same device or link to the same intermediate server whenjoining a session, document may be pre-transmitted and cached. In othercases, immediately upon a conferee linking to a session, queue documentsmay be cached. In most cases the caching process will only take tens ofseconds and therefore can be accomplished at the beginning of a sessionwhile conferees are linking up and waiting for other conferees to join.

A simple caching process 680 is illustrated in flow chart form in FIG.30. At block 682, the session server determines if a session iscommencing and, if so, at block 684, the server downloads all sessiondocuments or files to each conferee device and to each memory associatedwith each screen that has been invited to the session. At block 686 thedocuments received by devices and invited screens are stored in cachesassociated with each device for subsequent use during the session.

Referring again to FIG. 1, in many cases large common screens 420 willonly be equipped to operate as output devices and will have no inputcapability. In these cases, there is no reason to present input toolsand icons on the common screens as they would be unusable. For thisreason, it is contemplated that, in at least some cases, screens invitedto sessions that do not have input capabilities may present only ashared window view instead of the conferee interface view describedabove so that the shared content can be presented in a larger format.For instance, see FIG. 31 where the conferee interface view is shown at700 and an exemplary invited large screen view is shown at 702. Thelarge screen or output view 702 mirrors the content shown in sharingwindow 274 on view 700 and may not include any of the other information(e.g. the document queue, the conferee queue, the tools for pagemanipulation, etc.)

In other cases, the output view may include at least some indication ofwho is linked to a session and/or who has control of the session at anyspecific time. To this end, for instance, see FIG. 32 that shows anoutput view 704 including a shared window 706 and a conferee queue 708that shows images of videos of conferees currently linked to the sessionassociated with the view. In addition to showing linked conferees, acurrently active or more recently active conferee may be indicated viacross-hatching 710 or otherwise visually distinguishing the conferee'sicon in queue 708. For instance, if the conferee associated within icon710 is the most recent conferee to have presented the page in space 706,icon 710 may be highlighted either for a short time or persistentlyuntil another conferee switches the page or the document shown in sharedwindow 706. In the alternative, a supplemental or “indicator” image 712of the conferee controlling the sharing window may be presented in aperipheral area of the sharing window or at some other discrete locationoutside the sharing window to indicate a current controlling conferee.

In other cases at least some of the large common displays used for asession will be interactive including a touch screen or the like so thatone or more conferees can interact therewith to manipulate a session inways described herein. In these cases a view similar to the view shownin FIG. 19 may be presented on a large common screen including queuesand tool icons. In at least some cases it is contemplated that thesystem server 12 may keep track of screen capabilities and automaticallyprovide either a sharing window view or a user interface view dependingon screen capabilities. In other cases each device linked to a sessionmay indicate its capabilities to the server causing the server to selectthe interface to display.

In at least some cases it is contemplated that a location trackingsystem may be linked to the system server so that locations of personaland portable conferee devices used to link to sessions can bedetermined. Conferee device location could then be used to help aconferee identify resources available proximate a conferee's locationthat could be used to enhance a session. For instance, a conferee'sdevice location and hence the conferee's location could be used toidentify large display screens in the vicinity of the conferee that areavailable for linking to a session.

Referring again to FIG. 1, wireless access points or other sensors thatcan generate information useable to identify the locations of confereeswithin buildings or other spaces are shown at 719. In the case ofwireless access points, signals from several of the access points can beused to triangulate the location of a conferee's device within a space.In other cases the sensors 719 may include entry or exit sensors in adoorway associated with a conference space or other proximity sensorsthat sense when a conferee's device is in a relatively specific area.Signals from the sensors are received by server 12 and used to trackdevice locations. In the alternative, a separate device tracking systemmay track and provide location information to server 12. Then, when aconferee joins a conference session, the server can offer specificproximate large screens to the conferee for use to help the confereenarrow down optimal options.

Referring to FIG. 33, a schematic shows first and second large displayscreens 720 and 722 that may be mounted within a conference room as wellas a conferee device display screen shot 724 where a conferee hasselected the add device icon 282 to identify at least one common displayscreen proximate the conferee to be invited to the session. When icon282 is selected, invite window 726 is opened which, among other things,enables the conferee to select additional screens to invite to thesession. Window 726 includes a “Proximate Screens” sub-window 730 and a“Remote Screens” sub-window 732. Any screen that is in the near vicinityof the conferee as recognized by server 12 will be listed in sub-window730 and all other screens that may be invited are listed in sub-window732. In addition, screen identifiers XJ7002 and PJ6001 are displayed orpresented on screens 720 and 722, respectively, to help the confereedistinguish one from the other. The identifiers are also presented inscreen selection icons 734 and 736 which can be selected to invite oneor both of screens 720 and 722 to the session.

It has been recognized that many common large display screens withinspace generally may have several different uses and the conferencing usemay only be one of several uses. For instance, when not used forconferencing, a common screen may simply present a news program or maybe programmed to loop through various advertisements or to present aninteresting blog or may be programmed to perform any of several otherfunctions. In these cases, a screen identifier like XJ7002 should not bepresented all the time and should only be presented when a conferee isseeking a large screen for viewing a presentation. In this regard,referring again to FIG. 33, when a conferee selects icon 282 to invite aproximate large screen, server 12 may identify proximate large screensand control one or more of those screens to present a screen indicatorlike XJ7002 to aid in selection and on the fly configuration of sessiondevices.

As described briefly above, in some cases a dongle or other portablewireless transceiver device may be linked to a common display screen torender the display addressable during a session. For instance, see FIG.34 where large screens 720 and 722 are again shown along with a screenshot 724 from a conferee's device display and a dongle 422. In FIG. 34,the dongle has not been plugged into one of the screens. The confereehas selected icon 282 to invite a large output screen to a session andthat selection has opened window 740 that requests that the confereeenter a screen name or identifier in a field 746 to invite the screen tothe session.

Referring also to FIG. 35, the conferee plugs the dongle 422 into anHDMI or other input port on the screen 720. When the dongle is pluggedin, the dongle runs a software program and, among other things,generates an identifier XJ7002 which is presented on the screen 720. Theconferee can enter the screen name in field 746 to specify the screen tobe invited. In the alternative, the dongle 422 may transmit itsidentifier to proximate conferee devices and the conferee device havingwindow 740 open may automatically fill in field 746. Once send inviteicon 747 is selected, server 12 links to screen 720 via a virtualnetwork address, transmits session documents to the screen 720 and aprocessor either in the screen 720 or in the dongle 422 caches thedocuments in memory for rapid access during the session.

A process 760 for using a dongle to link a screen to a session is shownin FIG. 36. At block 762, a conferee uses the conferee's personalportable or other personal computing device to link to a session. Atblock 764, the server 12 (see again FIG. 1) transmits all of the sessionfiles to the conferee's device which are cached in a memory associatedwith the conferee's device. At block 766, the conferee plugs the dongle422 into a large common screen that the conferee intends to invite tothe session causing presentation of the screen address via the displayat block 768. At block 770, the conferee enters the screen address intoan address field (see 746 in FIG. 35) causing the server 12 to link tothe screen associated with the entered address at 772. At 774, theserver transmits the session files to the newly linked screen and atblock 776 the session continues, now with shared content on each of theconferee's personal device and on the newly linked large display screen.

It should be clear that in at least some embodiments of the presentdisclosure, any conferee that is invited to a session or that is linkedto an ongoing session has the ability to invite large common screens tothe session without having to interrupt the ongoing session and withoutrequiring any authorization from other session conferees. In effect, aconferee can independently change her device viewing configurationwithout disrupting any other conferees. Similarly, any conferee that isinvited to a session or that is linked to an ongoing session has theability to invite other conferees to the session without seekingauthorization from other conferees.

In at least some cases, where server 12 can track locations of confereedevices used in a session, server 12 may be programmed to delink from ascreen when no conferees are proximate the display only screen. Forinstance, if conferees leave a conference room and are stillparticipating in a conference session via their portable devices, server12 may delink from large display only screens in the conference room sothat potentially sensitive documents are not presented in the conferenceroom while conferees are absent.

Referring to FIG. 37, a process 800 for delinking a session from commonscreens when conferees move away from the common screens is illustrated.At block 802, a session is started including at least one common viewingscreen and at least one conferee device that is proximate the viewingscreen. At block 804, server 12 monitors the locations of conferees inthe session by monitoring the locations of the conferee devices. Atblock 806, server 12 determines if at least one conferee is proximatethe at least one common viewing screen. Where at least one confereeremains proximate a common viewing screen, the session remains linked tothe common screen as control loops back up to block 804. If at least oneconferee is not proximate the common viewing screen, control passes toblock 808 where server 12 delinks the session from the common viewingscreen. At block 810 the session continues with other devices linked tothe session including the mobile or portable conferee devices.

In some cases when a last conferee leaves a space in which a commonscreen is presenting a session, server 12 will present a query in a popup window (not illustrated) asking the conferee if the session should bedelinked from the common screen. In this case, the conferee could allowthe session to continue on the common screen for some reason. Forinstance, if the conferee is only leaving the conference space for 5minutes the conferee may want to continue to present the session on thecommon screen to avoid the need to re-link to the session. As anotherinstance, there may be conferees in the space viewing the session on thecommon screen that do not have personal devices linked to the sessionand the conferee leaving the session may not want to cut off the otherunlinked conferees from the session.

In some cases when a last conferee leaves a session, the session mayremain linked to the common screen but the common screen may be blankedout or otherwise may show a different scene than the session view untilone of the conferees with a device linked to the session again entersthe conference space. When a conferee reenters a space, the server mayautomatically re-present the session in its current state. In thealternative, the server may offer the conferee the choice to re-presentthe session on the common screen in its current state.

In many cases one conferee may have access to two or more screens andmay prefer to present some session content on a second personal screenduring a session. For instance, many people today use both a laptop anda tablet type computing device (e.g., an Ipad, an Android pad, etc.),where each of the laptop and the tablet device includes a separatedisplay screen. In at least some embodiments it is contemplated that aconferee may be able to invite two personal display devices to a sessionwhere the second display device can be used as a private second screenfor viewing an additional document view.

Referring again to FIG. 33, in addition to the features described above,the exemplary invite window 726 includes a “My Second Screen” icon 731.When icon 731 is selected, either a pre-input address of the conferee'ssecond device (e.g., a phone number or other identifier) is used toinvite the second device to the session or the conferee is queried forthe address of the second device which the conferee can manually enter.Once server 12 has the address of the second device, server 12 links tothat device and transmits the session documents thereto to be cached ina memory associated with the second device. In addition, server 12stores a flag indicating that the second device is a second personaldevice for the conferee so that the second device can be driven in adifferent fashion than a primary display device.

Referring to FIG. 38, a first or primary device 909 and a second orsecondary device 912 are shown that include a tablet type device 909 anda smart phone type device 912. The primary device screen 911 lookssimilar to the screens described above with two exceptions. First,screen 911 includes an icon 910 associated with the second device 912.Second, screen 911 includes an icon 907 that is shown double crosshatched to indicate that the document associated therewith is currentlybeing presented on the second device display which is labeled 914. Thesecond device display 914 presents the second document that isassociated with highlighted icon 907 at 916 which, in the presentexample, is an agenda for the session. Here, the second screen 914presents only a viewing image with a stripped down interface thatincludes a progression tool 915 for changing the page of the documentpresented on screen 914. The presented second screen 914 does notinclude any other interface tools, a document queue, a conferee queue,etc., each of which is presented via display screen 911. Instead, theinstance of a document presented via screen 914 is enlarged to themaximum size so that the document can be viewed relatively easily.

In the FIG. 38 example, a conferee can use the queues and other toolspresented via device 909 in the same manner that is described above. Inaddition, the conferee can change the content on the second screen 914via actions on the first screen 911. For instance, the conferee canchange the document presented on the second screen 914 by simplydragging a different document from the queue 276 to the second screenicon 910. If a different document is dragged to icon 910, the iconassociated with the dragged document in the queue would be highlightedwith double cross hatching to indicate that the document associatedthere with is presented on the second screen 914 and document icon 907highlighting would be removed.

In the FIG. 38 case, the content on the second screen 914 may only befor use by the conferee that invited the second screen and may not bemirrored on other session screens. In this case, the second screenoperates like a private window. In the alternative, where at least twoconferees use a second screen, in at least some cases, all secondscreens may be mirror images of the other second screens linked to thesystem. Thus, for instance, where each of two conferees use two devicesas in FIG. 38 to access more information during a session, the server 12may automatically associate the second display screens with each otherso that any document or page presented on one of the screens isautomatically and essentially in real time, presented on the other ofthe second display screens. For example, in FIG. 38, assume that each offirst and second conferees are viewing the same first and second screens911 and 914 on their own devices at two disparate locations. Here, ifthe first conferee drags document icon 903 into the second screen field907, the document associated with icon 903 would be presented on screens914 on each of the first and second conferee's second devices. Thus,remote conferencing using multiple screens that can be associated witheach other on the fly is contemplated.

In addition to being able to invite two personal devices to a session,in at least some embodiments it is contemplated that several proximatecommon screens may be invited to a session so that two or more documentmay be viewed on the proximate screens at the same time. In this regard,see FIG. 39 where a sub-window 831 that may replace sub-window 730 inFIG. 33 is illustrated for specifying if a common screen is to be usedas a primary display device or a secondary display device. In FIG. 33,when a conferee selects icon 282 to open the invite window 726 includingsub-window 808, different controls 830 and 832 for two proximate screens(see again 720 and 722 in FIG. 33) are presented. Control 830 allows aconferee to specify if screen XJ7002 is to be used as a primary screen834 or as a secondary screen 836 while control 832 allows the confereeto specify if screen PJ6001 is to be used as a primary screen 838 or asecondary screen 839.

In at least some cases a secondary common screen will only be availablein systems where the server mirrors content on all secondary screens sothat conferees with two screen access always see the same content oneach of the first and second screens. For instance, see FIGS. 38 and 40where two different documents in widow 274 and on screen 914 aremirrored on two large common display screens 854 and 856. Icons 858 and860 indicting via an image or video of conferees which conferee movedeach document to the sharing spaces are shown. In other cases where atleast one of the common screens is also an input device (e.g., a touchsensitive screen), the input capable screen may present the completecontrol interface as shown at 911 in FIG. 38 and the second screen maybe controlled in a semi-private fashion without mirroring the secondscreen on other session device displays.

In other embodiments it is contemplated that two sharing windows may bepresented on each or at least a subset of conferee device displays orperhaps on all conferee device displays so that first and seconddocuments can be viewed at one time by the subset or all of theconferees. To this end, see FIG. 41 which shows a screen shot thatincludes a second sharing window 852 that is smaller than primarysharing window 274. Here, any conferee can move any document intosharing window 852 by dragging an associated document icon from thequeue 276 into space 852. When a conferee changes the document viewed inwindow 852 on the conferee's screen, the document in other secondaryspaces on other conferee devices is similarly changed. Here, clearly theimage in the larger sharing space 274 is easier to view than the imagein the second space 852. To switch the documents among the two spaced274 and 852, any conferee can drag a document from space 852 to space274 or vice versa. Here, in at least some embodiments an icon includingthe image or video of the conferee that moved the most recent documentinto each of spaces 274 and 852 may be spatially associated with thespace as shown at 855 and 857.

In at least some cases where two large common and proximate displays arelinked to a session and a conferee only has access to a single display(e.g., a portable laptop display), the single conferee display maypresent the screen shot in FIG. 41 showing both the first and secondsharing windows 274 and 852 while the large common displays 854 and 856mirror the first and second sharing windows 274 and 852, respectively.In this case, any change to either of the documents in either of thefirst or second sharing windows 274 or 852 would be mirrored on screens854 and 856, respectively. To set this arrangement up, the confereewould simply invite the two large screens to the session and wouldspecify each as primary or secondary.

In at least some embodiments where server 12 supports audio and videoconferencing as well as data conferencing, server 12 may be programmedto present video of a most audibly active conferee in a session. Forinstance, where a first conferee speaks for two minutes followed by asecond conferee for 18 seconds, the system may present video and audioof the first conferee to all linked devices for the first two minutesfollowed by audio and video of the second conferee for the next 18seconds.

Referring again to FIG. 1, to obtain audio from conferees, microphones17 may be provided for each conferee device to feed the audio to server12. Here, server 12 is programmed to compare audio from the differentmicrophones and identify the loudest audio signal received. Video from acamera associated with the microphone that generates the loudest audiosignal is then transmitted to each of the session linked devices to bedisplayed. In at least some cases the server 12 would be programmed withsome hysteresis so that inadvertent loud sounds do not switch thepresented video from one conferee to another to quickly. Where there isa silent period, in some cases, the server would maintain the video ofthe conferee that most recently spoke or may switch out to a generalconference room image of conferees in a space associated with thesession.

Referring again to FIG. 42, in at least some cases the video of the mostaudibly active conferee may be presented via either the primary screen274 or the secondary screen 852, at the direction of any one of theconferees linked to the session. For instance, in FIG. 42 a “MostActive” icon 923 is presented in the conferee queue where icon 923 canbe dragged to either of the primary or secondary windows to show thevideo of the most active conferee. Arrow 920 represents a draggingaction which results in the video of the most active conferee in space852 as shown. Other conferee icons (e.g., 921) may also be dragged intoeither of the primary or secondary sharing windows 274 or 852,respectively, to show a persistent video of one of the conferees.

In at least some cases, any conferee may be able to replace any confereevideo in either of the primary or secondary sharing windows by dragginga document icon from document queue 276 to one of the primary orsecondary windows or by dragging another conferee icon to one of thewindows.

It has also been contemplated that there will be times when a subset ofconferees linked to a session may want to share a session documentamongst themselves without sharing with the larger group for somereason. For instance, referring to FIG. 43, a first conferee associatedwith the device presenting the screen shot shown in FIG. 43 may want toshare a document presented in the first conferee's private window 962with a second conferee associated with conferee icon 964. In at leastsome cases it is contemplated that, to share the document in privatewindow 962, the first conferee can simply drag from window 962 to theconferee icon 964 to effectively “drop” the document from window 962into a side bar window as shown in FIG. 44 at 968. Here, the side barwindow 968 would be presented on the first conferee's device display asshown in FIG. 44 and would also be opened up on the second conferee'sdevice display in a similar fashion. In some cases a dialog window 974would also be opened to enable the conferees to text via an instantmessenger application or the like back and forth without communicatingwith other conferees in the session. A conferee indicator 972 ispresented on the side bar window or is at least spatially associatedthere with to indicate the identity of the other conferee linked to theside bar. To add another conferee to the side bar, an icon associatedwith the other conferee may be selected and dragged into the side barwindow causing the server to present the side bar window on the otherconferee's device display and causing each of the first and secondconferee's devices to present another indicator akin to 972 to indicatethe identity of the other conferee added to the side bar.

In some embodiments where a side bar is formed between two or moreconferees, server 12 will automatically delink audio between the two ormore conferees that are part of the side bar from the larger session sothat the side bar conferees can have a semi-private conferenceindependent of the other conferees. In some cases, while the side baraudio is cut out of the larger session, the larger session audio maycontinue to be presented to the side bar conferees either at normalvolume level or at some reduced volume level so that the side barconferees can still follow the larger session while conducting theirside bar. In this case the text window 974 may not be needed. At anytime during a side bar, close icon 968 may be selected to close the sidebar session. When a side bar is closed, in addition to removing the sidebar window from conferee screens, full conferee audio would againcommence.

It has further been recognized that, in addition to sharing documentslike PDFs, JPEGS, Flash videos, etc., conferees in some cases will wantto show content within the context of operating applications such as aword processor, a spread sheet application, various drawing programs,etc. One way to enable conferees to share content in operatingapplications is to allow a conferee to run an application on theconferee's computing device and share the conferee's device “desktop”with other conferees in a sharing window during a session.

In order to maintain a simple and intuitive interface where all featureswork in a similar fashion, as in the case of “fixed” documents that havea generally persistent form (e.g., PDFs, videos, etc.) and that areadded to a session queue prior to sharing, prior to sharing a desktopduring a session, an icon for controlling desktop sharing has to beprovided in a queue on the session interface. To this end, see againFIG. 20 where the list of sources 534 includes a “My Desktop” option 531that can be selected to add an icon for a conferee's desktop to a queue.Unlike static documents (e.g., a PDF, a JPEG, etc.) that do not changeand therefore can be uploaded and cached in queues by devices linked toa session once for subsequent use, a desktop is dynamic (e.g., changesas a conferee interacts therewith) and therefore caching a desktop isnot generally an option. Instead, when a desktop is added to a queue,only a desktop icon is added to the queue where the icon can be used tostart a desktop streaming process when selected for sharing.

Referring to FIG. 45, in at least some cases a desktop icon 515 may beadded to a general document queue for a session to be moved into asharing window 274 by any conferee at any time. Here, it is contemplatedthat when a conferee other than the conferee associated with a desktopicon uses the desktop icon to share another conferee's desktop, anintermediate step may occur where the conferee associated with thedesktop to be shared has to authorize the sharing process. For instance,upon a conferee attempting to share another conferee's desktop, a pop upwindow may appear on the display screen of the device used by theconferee associated with the desktop to be shared querying whether theconferee authorizes sharing or not. In this case desktop sharing wouldonly commence upon an affirmative response.

In other cases desktop sharing in a session may be substantiallyrestricted so that only a conferee that adds a desktop icon to a sessionqueue can share the desktop in a sharing window. To this end, desktopsare dynamic and therefore, as a conferee uses her desktop, theinformation presented on the desktop often is not intended for sharingin a session and instead, the desktop has to be prepared for sharingprior to the act of sharing. In this case, if any conferee could selectthe desktop of another conferee represented in the queue for sessionsharing at any time, a shared desktop could include informationunintended for sharing when the act of sharing occurs. Restrictingdesktop icon selection to conferees that add a desktop to a sessionshould avoid unintended desktop sharing.

Even though a desktop icon may only be selectable for sharing by aconferee that adds a desktop icon to a session queue, it is useful toinclude a desktop icon in queues on all session linked interface devicesso that all conferees are aware that other conferees are contemplatingsharing their desktops. Thus, in at least some cases, desktop icons maybe presented in all session queues even though only one conferee (e.g.,the conferee associated with a desktop) may be able to select each ofthe desktop icons for sharing. In at least some cases, while all desktopicons added to the session by any conferee may appear in each documentqueue, desktop icons that a specific conferee cannot select for sharing(e.g., desktop icons associated with other conferees) may be visuallydistinguished to indicate inability for the conferee to select. Forinstance, desktop icons that are not selectable by a conferee may berendered semi-transparent to indicate that the icons cannot be selected.

In still other cases desktop icons may be added to private queues foreach conferee so that only the conferee associated with the desktop seesthe icon and can select the desktop icon for sharing. To this end, seeagain FIG. 28 that shows a conferee's desktop icon 513 in a privatequeue. By placing the desktop icon a private queue, a conferee has asense that the desktop is private and will not be shared unless theconferee takes affirmative steps to share. In addition, where desktopicons are only presented in private queues, conferees are not confusedby their appearance in the session document queue.

To move a desktop into the sharing window, a conferee simply drags (ordouble clicks) the desktop icon 515 (or 513 in FIG. 28 in the case wherethe desktop icon is in a private queue) into the sharing window 274causing the document shared in the window 274 to be replaced by thedesktop image. When the desktop icon is dropped in window 274, thedevice associated with the desktop icon starts to stream the dynamicdesktop image to the session server 12 which in turn distributes thedynamic desktop image to all devices linked to the session. Each devicereceiving the streaming desktop uses the streaming desktop to drive thesharing window 274 on the interface in the session browser (see streamedimage in window 274 in FIG. 45).

Because the device associated with a shared desktop icon is linked tothe session and therefore typically has a session interface akin to theinterface shown in FIG. 45 open when the desktop is shared, initiallythe streamed desktop image will often include the interface view in itscurrent state. Where a conferee's device is windows based and thesession interface browser is open in a first window, the conferee maymaximize a second window and run an application in the second windowthat would become the streamed desktop image.

To end desktop sharing, the conferee that is sharing the desktop canre-access the session interface in the first window and move any contentobject including a static document, a conferee video, etc., into thesharing window. Similarly, any other conferee can end desktop sharing bymoving a content object into the sharing window. When a conferee otherthan the conferee that is sharing a desktop image moves another contentobject into the sharing window 274, if the conferee that was sharing thedesktop image is not viewing the session interface browser in a window,the window including the interface browser is automatically renderedviewable so that the conferee knows that the desktop sharing has ceased.

Where a conferee's device is screen based (e.g., different applicationsare opened on different screens that can be accessed one at a time as onmany smart phones, tablet devices, etc.) and the session interfacebrowser is open in a first screen, upon sharing the desktop image, theconferee may open a second screen and run an application on the secondscreen that would become the streamed desktop image. To end desktopsharing, the conferee that is sharing the desktop can re-access thesession interface on the first screen and move any content objectincluding a static document, a conferee video, etc., into the sharingwindow. Similarly, any other conferee can end desktop sharing by movinga content object into the sharing window. When a conferee other than theconferee that is sharing a desktop image moves another content objectinto the sharing window 274, if the conferee that was sharing thedesktop image is not viewing the session interface browser on a screen,the screen including the interface browser is rendered viewable so thatthe conferee knows that the desktop sharing has ceased and to give theconferee a view of the session that is consistent with the view seen byother linked conferees.

Although not shown, in at least some cases, there may be a way for oneor any conferee linked to a session to end desktop sharing by, ineffect, blanking content in the sharing window so that no content isshared in that window. In this manner desktop sharing could be endedwithout requiring sharing of other content in the sharing window toavoid possible confusion if there is no other content that a confereewould like to share at the specific time.

In other cases, when a conferee shares a desktop by dragging the desktopicon into the sharing window on an interface browser, the conferee'sdevice may automatically minimize the interface browser so that whateveris “below” the browser on the conferee's device is immediately viewableon the conferee's device display and therefore is immediately streamedto server 12 and on to the other session linked devices for sharing.This process eliminates the intermediate step of streaming the sessioninterface to all conferees that has to be minimized prior to sharing theintended desktop content. Thus, here, a conferee intending to share adesktop application would open the desktop application in a secondwindow or on a second screen and prepare the application. For instance,where a drawing program is to be shared, the drawing program would beopened in the second window or on the second screen and then the sessioninterface browser in the first window (e.g., a window in addition to thewindow in which the session browser is operating) or on the first screenwould be used to drag the desktop icon to the sharing window 274. Uponsharing the desktop, the first window or screen would be minimized andthe second window or screen showing the session browser including theprepared drawing application would be shared.

In still other embodiments an intermediate step prior to sharing wouldoccur to enable a conferee to confirm that a desktop is ready to shareor to prepare the desktop prior to sharing. For instance, theintermediate step may include presenting the current state of aconferee's desktop in a private view so that the conferee can confirmthat the desktop is in condition for sharing. To this end, in FIG. 28,when the desktop icon 515 is dragged to sharing window 274, theconferee's desktop may be shown as part of an intermediate step as inFIG. 46 with the session interface removed from the conferee's displayand the current state of the desktop shown as at 737. Here, the confereecan manipulate the desktop in real time to control a maximizedapplication, open new windows to run other applications, search webpages to be shared, overlap several windows with several differentapplications opened and operating at the same time, etc.

In addition to showing the current state of the conferee's desktop, theFIG. 46 view adds a session browser icon 739 to the open applicationstoolbar at the bottom of the view that can be selected to re-access thesession interface browser. In addition, the device presenting the FIG.46 view also presents a simple sharing control overlay 745 to theconferee that is considering sharing the desktop. The sharing controloverlay includes a “Confirm Desktop Share” icon 741 and a “End DesktopShare” icon 743. Once the conferee has prepared the desktop for sharingvia the FIG. 46 interface, the conferee commences sharing by selectingicon 741. Prior to selection of icon 741 the desktop has not been sharedin the session and thereafter, the device presenting the desktop streamsthe desktop image to server 12 and on to the other session linkeddevices to be presented in the sharing spaces 274. If the confereedecides not to share the desktop, the conferee selects icon 743 whichre-maximizes the session interface browser (see again FIG. 45) withoutsharing the desktop.

If the desktop is shared, during the sharing process, in at least someembodiments the device sharing the desktop presents a persistent sharingcontrol overlay for ending the desktop sharing activity. To this end seethe exemplary screenshot 755 in FIG. 47 where a control overlay includesa “Cancel Desktop Share” icon 743 that can be selected at any time toend the desktop sharing activity and return to the session interfacebrowser view. In at least some cases the control overlay is onlypresented on the desktop that is being shared and is not streamed aspart of the desktop image to the server 12 or other session linkeddevices.

While the system described above requires a conferee to affirmativelyadd a desktop icon to a queue prior to sharing a desktop from theconferee's device, in other cases a desktop icon may automatically beadded to the session document queue or to the private queue for eachconferee interface device linked to a session. Thus, for instance, in acase where desktop icons are located in private queues, each of tenconferees linked to a session would have a unique desktop icon in his orher private queue (see again FIG. 28) at all times and manual additionof the icon to a queue would not be required. By providing desktop iconsautomatically in a queue, possible confusion related to whether or not adesktop can be shared and how to upload a desktop icon can be avoided.Here, because desktop images are not cached and instead are streamedonly when shared, adding desktop icons automatically to sessioninterfaces does not require caching and does not require streaming untila conferee actually shares a desktop with other conferees.

In some embodiments only a conferee sharing a desktop can control theapplications run on the conferee's desktop. For instance, where aconferee shares a word processor document via a session interface, theconferee can manipulate the document by adding text, changing fonts andfont size, highlighting text, adding a table, etc., but other confereesviewing the desktop shared in a sharing window 274 of a sessioninterface can only watch the application being manipulated.

In other cases it is contemplated that any conferee may be able tointeract with any application that is shared by another conferee via ashared desktop. To this end see again FIGS. 45 and 47. Here it isassumed that the conferee associated with icon 811 in FIG. 45 is sharinga desktop as shown in FIG. 47 and that other conferees see the shareddesktop as shown in the sharing window 274 in FIG. 45. Pointing icon 527is controlled by the conferee sharing the desktop while pointing icon529 is controlled by the conferee associated with icon 813. The confereeicons 811 and 813 are highlighted or otherwise visually distinguished ina fashion similar to the pointing icons 527 and 529, respectively, sothat conferees can discern which conferee is controlling which pointingicon. For instance, the shadow boxes about icons 811 and 813 may be redand blue respectively and the pointing icons 527 and 529 may also be redand blue, respectively.

As pointing icon 527 is moved about on the desktop shown in FIG. 47 andas the desktop is used to modify the word processor document, movementof the icon 527 and document modifications are simply reproduced on allsession linked devices as part of the dynamic streaming desktop image.

To enable the conferee associated with icon 813 to control the streamingdesktop shared by the conferee associated with icon 811, the preciselocations of any activity on the image of the shared desktop in space274 are identified and commands related to the activities are correlatedwith the locations and the locations and commands are transmitted to theconferee device that generates the desktop. For instance, referringagain to FIG. 45, as icon 529 is moved about on the desktop image inwindow 274, the location of the icon and a command to create thepointing icon are transmitted to the device generating the desktop. Asanother instance, if a conferee clicks on a point in the word processordocument, the click location and a command indicating that a clickoccurred are transmitted to the device generating the desktop. As oneother instance, after a click at a location, if a conferee types a word,the locations of each letter and each letter generated are transmittedto the device generating the desktop.

Upon receiving locations and associated commands, those locations andcommands are used by the operating system and applications on the devicegenerating the desktop to drive the operating system and theapplications. For instance, the command to generate a pointing icon isused to create a pointing icon on the desktop image at the associatedlocation on the desktop image, the command to click at a point in a wordprocessor document is used to generate a cursor at the associatedlocation, and the commands indicating locations and associated lettersthat comprise a word are used to drive the word processor program to addthe letters at the associated locations in the document. As the commandsand associated locations are converted into changes to the desktopimage, the resulting new desktop images are streamed to the server 12and on to the session linked devices to be shared among the sessionconferees. In these cases, the session browsers are equipped to obtaincommands for controlling the operating system and applications run by adevice linked to a session and can transmit those commands to theoperating system and applications to be performed to control theoperating system and applications to change a desktop image essentiallyin real time.

In other embodiments where a software application is ubiquitous so thatevery device or at least a sub-set of devices linked to a session havethe application loaded or can obtain free access to the application(e.g., internet based word processors, spread sheets, etc.), when anapplication is shared, each device may open its own instance of theapplication and load up a document from the shared application forviewing and interaction. Here, any conferee input from any conferee maybe streamed to each session linked device and may be used to update thedevice specific instance of the application and shared document. Thistype of system where a shared application is run by each linked deviceand an instance of a shared document on the application is stored oneach linked device, like the cached documents, can expedite the processof sharing the application, the related document and any edits,annotations, etc. made to the document.

In at least some embodiments, it is contemplated that any time aconferee has the session application open in a browser window or on abrowser screen, the system may present a session overlay or border forsharing the conferee's desktop image or adding the desktop to thesession queue whenever the conferee is viewing a window or screen otherthan the session window or screen. Thus, for instance, referring againto FIG. 42, assume that the conferee associated with icon 921 wants toshare an application running on a different screen on her device. Theconferee may use a standard interface feature on her device to switch tothe other screen causing her device to present the other application asshown in FIG. 56. Upon switching to the other screen, the device maypresent the application open on the other screen as shown with a sharingoverlay that includes a “Return To Session Browser” icon 1200 and a“Share Desktop In Session” icon 1202. To return to the session open onthe session browser screen, the conferee can select icon 1200.

Here, the conferee may switch to another application open on yet adifferent screen and the overlay including icons 1200 and 1202 would bepersistently presented. Once the conferee opens an application that theconferee would like to share, the conferee can simply select icon 1202to start streaming the conferee's current desktop image to the sessionserver and on to the session linked devices for sharing in the sharingwindow. Once sharing commences, desktop sharing can be halted in any ofthe ways described above (e.g., selection of a cancel icon 777 as inFIG. 47, etc.). Instead of immediately sharing the desktop and openedapplication, the conferee may select the “Add To Session Queue” icon1204 to add a desktop icon to the session queue in cases where a desktopicon is not already automatically included in the queue.

Here, while an application in a screen is being shared, the sharingconferee can control the application to change content and the changeswould be presented to other linked conferees. In addition, the sharingconferee could switch to a different screen in which a differentapplication is open and that application would be shared with sessionlinked conferees. When the conferee switches to a different applicationto share, the overlay shown in FIG. 47 would persist so that theconferee could cancel desktop sharing or return to the session browserat any time.

It has been recognized that, instead of sharing content via dynamicapplications (e.g., a spreadsheet, a word processor application, adrawing application, etc.) via desktop sharing, in at least some cases aconferee will want to share only an application without sharing anentire desktop. For instance, while a conferee is using a smart phone, atablet type device, a laptop or the like, often times information willappear on the device screen that is out of the control of the conferee.For example, an instant message window may pop up to present a messagefrom a friend at any time or a meeting or appointment reminder windowmay pop up at any time. As another instance, a conferee may prefersharing on an application by application basis as opposed to a dynamicdesktop so that the conferee does not inadvertently and unintentionallyshare an application or content in the application.

In addition, it has been recognized that in many cases conferees willwant the ability to privately peruse content or a document associatedwith a dynamic application that another conferee places in a sessionqueue in a manner akin to that described above with respect to staticdocuments at any time prior to, during or after a session period. Thus,for instance, it would be useful in many cases for a first conferee toadd a first word processor document that exists in a dynamic applicationto a session queue for access via the application during a session andfor any conferee invited to the session to be able to view the firstword processor document even if the conferee cannot access or controlthe application on the first conferee's device.

In at least some embodiments it is contemplated that the system willenable any conferee to add a document or file to a queue where, at thetime the document or file is added to the queue, the document or fileonly exists as content in a dynamic application. Here, upon adding adocument to the queue, in at least some cases, the document is added ina format that captures the content of the document in a persistentfashion which is independently accessible by any conferee at any timeunless the document is affirmatively removed from the session queue. Forinstance, in at least some cases a PDF or JPEG of the document may begenerated and added to the queue to be accessed by any conferee. In thiscase, the PDF or other format document in the queue may represent thedocument itself or, in other cases, may represent screen shots of theoutput of the dynamic application including the content (e.g., aspecific document) to be shared presented within the application itself.Documents generated for the queue in this fashion are cached for quickaccess by any of the session linked devices.

Once an application and associated content is added to the session queueas a document, in addition to any conferee being able to open thedocument in a private window, any conferee may also move the documentinto the sharing window via double clicking the document, dragging anicon associated with the document from the queue to the sharing window,etc. When the document is opened in a private window, in at least someembodiments, the document is opened in a static form as opposed towithin the application associated with the document so that, when inprivate view, none of the conferees can use the associated applicationto alter the content of the document.

In at least some cases, whenever any conferee opens a documentassociated with a dynamic application in the sharing window, theapplication associated therewith is automatically run and the documentis opened within the application in the sharing window so that anyconferee may edit the document using the application in the sharingwindow. Here, when a document is edited in a sharing window, in at leastsome cases, the edits to the document are stored on the device of theconferee that added the original document to the queue and a newpersistent (e.g., a PDF) version of the document is generated and storedin the queue as part of the session record for subsequent access.

In other embodiments, when a document or file associated with a dynamicapplication is added by a first conferee to a session queue, only thefirst conferee may be able to edit the document despite the capabilityof other conferees to access the shared persistent version of thedocument. For instance, when a word processor application and associatedword process document is shared by a first conferee by placing theapplication/document in a session queue and the document is representedas a PDF (e.g., in a persistent form), conferees other than the firstconferee may only be able to access the PDF version of the document.Here, when a second conferee shares the document in the sharing window,only the PDF version of the document may be presented.

If, however, the first conferee shares the document from the queue bydragging the document to the sharing window, the system mayautomatically cause the first conferee's device to run the applicationassociated with the shared document, load the shared document and startto stream the shared document to the session server to be passed on tothe other session linked devices. Here, once the document is opened inthe associated application and the application and document are beingstreamed to the other linked devices, the first conferee can used theconferee's device to manipulate or edit the document within theapplication and those manipulations are shared with the other confereesvia their devices essentially in real time.

In this case, because only the application as opposed to the firstconferee's complete desktop is shared, any pop up windows will onlyappear on the first conferee's device and not within the shared sessionwindow or space. Similarly, if the first conferee opens a second screenor window to access a second application while the document and firstapplication open in a first screen or window are being shared, thecontents in the second screen or window are not shared.

In at least some embodiments it is contemplated that any conferee may beable to add two or more applications and related content (e.g., adocument) to a session queue. For instance, a first conferee may addeach of a first word processor document in a word processor applicationand a first spreadsheet in a spreadsheet application to a session queue.Thereafter, the first conferee may be able to access any of theapplications in the queue at any time to open the application andrelated document for private viewing, sharing, etc.

Referring again to FIG. 56, the exemplary screen shot shows a desktopimage 1180 where two different applications are opened in first andsecond windows 1182 and 1184 and where the second window 11845 overlapsthe first window 1182. Here, each application window includes an overlayor border section that includes session related icons for sharingapplications presented within the separate windows. To this end, window1184 includes a “Share Document In Session” icon 1206 and a “ShareDocument/Application In Session” icon 1208 as part of the overlay orborder to be presented via a conferee's device when the conferee islinked to a session and the conferee accesses an application in a windowor on a different screen from the window or screen in which the sessioninterface is presented. Icon 1206 can be selected to open a persistentversion (e.g., a PDF) of the document in the sharing window of thesession interface. In this regard, when icon 1206 is selected, thesystem generates (e.g., automatically prints a PDF version) a persistentversion of the document presented via the application in window 1184,adds the document to the session queue if its is not already in thequeue, cashes the document for access via each of the session linked orat least session associated (e.g., some devices by be associated with asession but not currently liked) conferee devices and causes each of thesession linked devices to open the shared document in a sharing window.

Referring still to FIG. 56, icon 1208 can be selected to duplicate theoutput of application running in window 1184 in the shared window of thesession interface including the document currently presented in window1184. In this regard, when icon 1208 is selected, the system streams theoutput of the application running in window 1184 to the session serverwhich passes the streamed video to all other session linked devices forsubstantially real time sharing. At this point, instead of seeing theentire desktop image as shown in FIG. 56, session conferees will see theapplication output from window 1184 in the sharing windows of thesession interfaces. Once the application is shared, any edits to thedocument presented by the application are presented simultaneously viaall of the shared windows.

Referring yet again to FIG. 56, a separate set of session control iconsare presented as part of an overlay or border for window 1182 includinga document sharing icon 1210 and an application sharing icon 1212. Icons1210 and 1212 operate in a fashion similar to that described above withrespect to icons 1206 and 1208. Thus, for instance, if a first confereeis sharing the application currently running in window 1184 in a sessionsharing window of the session interface and the first conferee selectsicon 1212, the system would change to duplicate or replicate theapplication and content from window 1182 in the sharing windows of thesession interfaces.

In at least some cases it may be that a window overlay or borderincluding session control icons would only be provided for a top windowwhen windows are layered on top of each other to avoid confusion or sothat space on a display screen is not taken up by too many sessioncontrol icons. Thus, for instance, in FIG. 56, because window 1184 is ontop of window 1182, the overlay including icons 1206 and 1208 may bepresented while the overlay for window 1182 including icons 1210 and1212 may not be presented. If window 1182 were moved to the top spot,the overlay would be removed from window 1184 and presented for window1182 in this case.

In at least some cases, after a conferee shares an application andcontent associated therewith, the conferee can navigate to other windowsor screens including the session interface or some other applicationprogram to perform other tasks while the shared application and contentare continually presented via the shared windows. Thus, for example, inFIG. 56, if the application in window 1184 is shared, the conferee thatshared window 1184 may select window 1182 to bring the application runtherein to the top of the desktop and may edit the document presented inwindow 1182 while still sharing the application in window 1184. Thisfeature enables great flexibility for an application sharing conferee tocontinue to perform various tasks while still sharing an application.

Referring to FIG. 48, an exemplary session interface screen shot isillustrated that shows various highlighting and other visual effectsmeant to convey ownership of different activities on the screen. In thisregard, the exemplary interface includes a shared document 560 insharing window 274 where cross hatching of a first document icon 561 inthe document queue 276 indicates that the document in the sharing window274 is associated with icon 561. The shadow box 681 on conferee icon 691indicates that the conferee associated with icon 691 opened the documentin sharing window 274. Each document icon in queue 276 is highlightedwith a distinguishing border that indicates which conferee added thedocument to the session queue. For instance, each of icons 685 ishighlighted via a dashed border to indicate that each of those documentswas added to the queue by the conferee that is associated with theconferee icon that has a similar dashed border (e.g., icon 687) in theconferee queue. Similarly, each icon in the set labelled 683 has beendouble cross-hatched to indicate that each of those documents was addedto the queue by the conferee that is associated with the conferee iconthat has a similar double cross-hatching (e.g., icon 691) in theconferee queue.

Referring still to FIG. 48, annotations of a document page in window 274also have appearances that are keyed to the different conferees. Forinstance, annotations by the conferee associated with icon 691 that hasa solid border may include solid lines as at 696 while annotations bythe conferee associated with icon 687 that has a dashed border mayinclude dashed lines as at 694. While shown as solid and dashed linesand borders, in particularly advantageous embodiments all of the bordersand lines use colors to visually distinguish. Thus, in FIG. 48 forinstance, all dashed lines and borders may be red while all solid linesand borders associated with document icons, conferee icons andannotations may be blue to help conferees quickly discern who is doingwhat regarding the session interface.

It has been recognized that a smart phone or tablet type device or evena camera that is capable of wireless communication representparticularly advantageous devices for generating content to be shared ina session. To this end, a session application may be loaded on to asmart phone that enables a conferee to quickly and easily upload imagesobtained via the phone camera to a session queue. Referring to FIG. 49,in at least some cases a conferee can use a phone camera, digital cameraor other device including a digital camera to take one or morepictures/images or video to be added to a queue. Then, when the confereeaccesses a conventional image sharing menu 1005 that enables theconferee to share images via a chat application (see chat icon 1004 inFIG. 49), an e-mail application (see e-mail icon 1006) or other sharingapplications, a session icon 1008 may be presented along with the othersharing application icons that can be selected to add an image to asession queue.

To add one or more images to a queue, first the conferee uses screenarrows 1010 and 1012 or some other on screen navigation tool like aswiping action to locate the images to be added to the queue. Images tobe added can be tagged via selection of an on screen check box 1014.Once images to add to the queue have been selected, the conferee selectssession upload icon 1008. In at least some embodiments, when icon 1008is selected, an interface for selecting one of several existing sessionqueues or to start a new session queue is provided as shown in FIG. 50.FIG. 50 includes a separately selectable icon 1020 and 1022 for eachsession that the specific conferee is currently associated with. Thus,each conferee that uses the system may have a different set of sessionoptions presented. FIG. 50 also includes a “Create New Session” icon1024 that can be selected to instantiate a new session with a newsession queue to which one or more images can be added.

It has also been recognized that it would be helpful if the conferencingsystem were able to distinguish new files in a queue from old files.Here, the terms “new” and “old” may mean different things in differentsystems. For instance, a new document to a specific conferee may mean adocument added to the queue since the last time the conferee accessedthe session queue. As another instance, a new document to a specificconferee may mean a document that has never been opened while theconferee was logged into a session regardless of whether or not thedocument was in the queue the previous time the conferee logged into thesession. As still one other instance, even if a document has been viewedby a conferee, if the document has been changed via annotation, additionof a note, etc., the document may be considered “new” to a conferee.

In at least some embodiments documents that are new to a conferee may behighlighted or otherwise visually distinguished in some fashion. Forinstance, in FIG. 51, documents 1050 that have been added to the sessionqueue 276 since the last time Jamie White accessed the queue are shownhighlighted in cross hatch. In the alternative, the cross hatcheddocument icons 1050 may indicate documents that have never been openedwhile Jamie White was logged into a session or documents that have atleast been changed since Jamie White was last linked to a session. Insome cases documents newly added to the queue may be visuallydistinguished (e.g., shown in different color) in a fashion differentthan documents that have been changed and/or documents that have been inthe queue for some time but that have never been opened while aparticular conferee was logged onto a session. For instance, for a firstconferee, newly added documents may be highlighted red, changeddocuments may be highlighted blue and old documents never opened whilethe first conferee was logged on to a session may be highlighted green.

Where several conferees are logged into a session at the same time, thehighlighting to indicate “new” documents may be different for eachconferee. For instance, a first conferee may have been logged in foreach of five conferences related to a session while a second confereeonly logged in for two of the five. In this case it is highly likelythat the first conferee has viewed more queue documents than the secondconferee and therefore the second conferee would have more documenticons highlighted as “new” than the first conferee.

Instead of highlighting new documents in the session queue, the systemmay present two queues, one including new documents and the otherincluding old documents. In this case the interface including bothqueues may look a lot like the interface in FIG. 28 except that thequeues 672 and 674 would be labeled “old” and “new” instead of “session”and “private.” In still other embodiments it is contemplated that athird category of documents may be distinguished by the systemincluding, for instance, documents in the queue but never opened while aspecific conferee was logged onto the system, but that were reviewed byother conferees in a prior sharing session. This third category may bevisually distinguished (e.g., highlighted using a third color) orpresented in a third suitably labeled queue. A fourth category mayinclude documents viewed by a sharing sub-set of session conferees sincethe last time a specific conferee participated in a conferenceassociated with the session. This would help a conferee understand whatwas missed during a recent conference.

In some embodiments a conferee may be able to cause the system tohighlight documents added to a queue by that conferee or any oneconferee or sub-set of conferees so that those documents can be easilydistinguished. For instance, see FIG. 51 where each document icon 1052added to the queue by Jamie White is shown with a shadow box.Highlighting icons for a conferee may be automated where icons added byeach conferee are automatically highlighted in some fashion on thedevice used by the specific conferee. In other cases a conferee may beable to select (e.g., double click) a conferee icon (see 1055 in FIG.51) in the conferee queue 278 to cause the system to highlight alldocuments added to the session queue by that conferee. For instance aconferee could select icon 1055 to highlight icons in queue 276associated with documents added to the queue by the conferee associatedwith icon 1055.

It has further been recognized that it would be advantageous for atleast some conferees to be able to look back at sessionconferences/meetings and see the sequence of various aspects of documentmanipulation. For instance, a conferee may want to see the sequence bywhich documents have been added to a session queue, the sequence inwhich documents have been accessed in session conferences, who postedand who accessed the documents, etc. To this end, in at least someembodiments a “History” icon 1048 as shown in FIG. 51 may be included ona session screen that can be selected to access a history function ofthe system.

When icon 1048 is selected, referring also to FIG. 52, the system maypresent a document history screen for viewing different aspects relatedto document sequencing. As shown, the view includes a document list 1060showing the date and time documents where added to the queue. The viewalso includes a conferee queue 1062 showing images or video of eachconferee currently linked to a session. In the alternative, the queue1062 may show all conferees that ever participated in a sessionregardless of whether or not the conferee is currently linked to thesession. Here, as in FIG. 51, a conferee may be able to highlight alldocuments in queue 1060 added to the queue by a specific conferee byselecting the conferee's icon in queue 1062. In FIG. 52, the confereeicon 1070 associated with Jamie White has been selected and ishighlighted with a shadow box and document icons 1072 in queue 1060 thatwere added by Jamie White are shown highlighted with cross hatching todistinguish those documents from others in the queue.

Meeting icons 1082 are also provided on the view that indicate specificpoints in time at which session conferences occurred. Here, a sessionconference may include any session during which two or more confereeswere logged on to a conference at the same time, during which more thanhalf of the conferees associated with a session logged on, during whichone or more documents have been shared among at least two or moreconferees, or any other criteria that indicates a threshold level ofactivity. Each icon 1082 may operate as a hyperlink to other informationabout a session conference including a list of conferees that attended,documents reviewed and applications run, times related to documentsharing and a log of additional activities.

Referring still to FIG. 52, the view includes a “session” icon 1080 forswitching back to a session view as shown in FIG. 51. A “Posted History”icon 1076 is included for selecting the posted queue 1060 shown in FIG.52. An “Access History” icon 1078 is provided for accessing another viewof the document history that shows which documents were accessed andwhen. To this end see the view in FIG. 53 where document icons arearranged in an access queue 1100 that sequentially shows when (date andtime) documents were accessed and by whom.

Referring to FIG. 54, another access view includes a document queue 1110that arranges document icons by session conference. For instance, queue1110 includes a first meeting entry 1120 and a second meeting entry 1130where icons 1112 associated with documents accessed during the firstmeeting and icons 1114 associated with documents accessed during thesecond meeting are presented in the first and second meeting entries1120 and 1130, respectively.

In any of the historical views shown in FIGS. 52 through 54, it iscontemplated that any of the document icons may be selected to open thedocument associated there with in a private window for viewing privatelyby a conferee. FIG. 55 shows yet another historical queue view wheredocuments are listed in the order in which they were added to the queueand include date and time information as well as information indicatingthe conferee that added each document to the queue. Here, the historicalqueue is located at the location of the session queue and therefore thelook and feel of the session view including the sharing window 274remains similar to when the session queue is presented. A conferee canswitch between the FIG. 55 view and the FIG. 51 view by selecting icons1150 and 1048.

The system described above offers may advantages over known conferencingsystems. First, the disclosed system enables a conferee to schedule orstart a current session with a plurality of other conferees easily andintuitively using e-mail or some other simple interface system.

Second, the system enables conferees to add content including documentsand files to a session queue at any time including prior to a sessionconference, during a session conference or after a conference has ended.The queue can persist indefinitely and operate as a repository for anycontent that may be of interest to conferees that participate in asession. The queue can be added to or trimmed down to only maintain whatis important to conferees at any time.

Third, in at least some cases the system enables any conferee to add newconferees to a session without requiring consent from any otherconferees and without disturbing other conferees associated with asession. For instance, where five people are participating in a sessionconference, a first of the five can invite a sixth conferee independentof the other four conferees. As another instance, the first confereecould initiate a separate session conference with the sixth confereewithout the other four conferees attending so that the first confereecould get the sixth conferee up to speed on session activitiesindependent of the other conferees.

Fourth, in at least some embodiments, any conferee can add additionaldisplay screens or devices to a session independent of other confereesand without disturbing other conferees. For instance, a first confereeusing a hand held device like a smart phone, a tablet, etc., may, duringa session conference, move to a location where the first conferee hasaccess to a large flat panel display screen. Recognizing the advantageof viewing a session via a large display screen, the first conferee caninvite the screen via an address or identifier associated with thescreen to the session conference. Thereafter, shared documents and filesare also presented on the large screen that was added to the session.

Fifth, the system may help a conferee find an available large displayscreen that can be invited to a session. To this end, the locations ofmany personal devices can be tracked as a user moves about in abuilding, on a campus, etc. when a conferee logs on to a session orprior to when a conferee is scheduled to attend a session, the systemmay identify the location of the conferee's device as well as thelocations of available large display screens and may offer to scheduleor commence use of one or more screens by the conferee during thesession.

Sixth, at least some embodiments of the disclosed system enable eachconferee to separately view queued session documents in private windowswhile still having the ability to view a currently shared document in asharing window. This enables each conferee to view and examine onedocument when the conferee independently determines that the documentmay be of interest without disturbing other conferees.

Seventh, in some embodiments private queues are provided for eachconferee to enable conferees to gather possible documents for a sessionwithout worrying about others viewing the documents and either beingconfused or passing judgment. Private queue documents can be sharedsubsequently in session in a sharing window and may be moved to thesession queue for access by all.

Eighth, in some systems all queued documents are cached by all confereedevices that link to a session to expedite sharing, moving betweendocuments, etc. When a session is over, the cached documents are removedfrom the conferee device memories and instances of the queued documentsare only persistently stored by the session server.

Ninth, in at lease some embodiments, conferees can share their devicedesktops (e.g., the current screen shot on their device display) withother conferees in a sharing window. Here, as in the case of sharingdocuments, any conferee can assume control of the sharing window fromother conferee simply by opening the conferee's desktop in the sharingwindow.

The particular embodiments disclosed above are illustrative only, as theinvention may be modified and practiced in different but equivalentmanners apparent to those skilled in the art having the benefit of theteachings herein. Furthermore, no limitations are intended to thedetails of construction or design herein shown, other than as describedin the claims below. It is therefore evident that the particularembodiments disclosed above may be altered or modified and all suchvariations are considered within the scope and spirit of the invention.Accordingly, the protection sought herein is as set forth in the claimsbelow.

Thus, the invention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, andalternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the invention asdefined by the following appended claims. To apprise the public of thescope of this invention, the following claims are made:

What is claimed is:
 1. A method of facilitating a collaboration sessionamong a plurality of conferees, each conferee using a distinct interfacedevice that includes a distinct display screen, the interface devicesincluding at least a first interface device including a first displayscreen used by a first conferee, the method comprising the steps of:presenting a first session interface on the first display screen, thefirst session interface including a first session queue and a firstsharing window, wherein a first conferee using the first sessioninterface can open any document in the session queue in the sharingwindows of each of the interfaces; presenting a second session interfaceon the second display screen, the second session interface including asecond session queue and a second sharing window, wherein a secondconferee using the second session interface can open any document in thesession queue in the sharing windows of each of the interfaces; andduring a conference content sharing session while content is beingshared among conferees in at least the first and second sharing windows:(i) identifying other display screens that may be used to present sharedcontent; (ii) presenting screen selection options for at least a subsetof the identified other display screens to at least the first confereevia the first session interface for selection; (iii) receiving aselection via the first session interface of at least one of thepresented screen selection options; and (iv) in response to the receivedselection, associating the display screen that is associated with theselected screen selection option with the first and second sessioninterfaces for accessing session content during the on-going session. 2.The method of claim 1 wherein the identified other display screensinclude at least a subset of display screens that are proximate thefirst conferee.
 3. The method of claim 2 wherein the step of identifyingother display screens includes identifying the location of the firstconferee within a space and identifying display screens in the generalarea of the first conferee.
 4. The method of claim 3 further includingpresenting a distinct identifier on each of the subset of displayscreens that are proximate the first conferee, the step of presentingscreen selection options including presenting a separate screenselection option on the first session interface for each of the distinctidentifiers presented on the subset of proximate display screens.
 5. Themethod of claim 4 wherein, while shared content is shared on at leastone of the other display screens in the subset, the shared contentcontinues to be shared in the first content sharing window on the firstsession interface.
 6. The method of claim 3 wherein the first confereecan select more than one of the other display screens for replicatingcontent from the first content sharing window and wherein, uponselecting more than one of the other display screens, shared content isreplicated on each of the selected other display screens.
 7. The methodof claim 1 further including the steps of, during the conference contentsharing session: (i) presenting screen selection options for at least asubset of the identified other display screens to at least the secondconferee via the second session interface for selection; (ii) receivinga selection via the second session interface of at least one of thepresented screen selection options; and (iii) in response to thereceived selection via the second session interface, associating thedisplay screen that is associated with the selected screen selectionoption with the first and second session interfaces for accessingsession content during the on-going session.
 8. The method of claim 1wherein at least one of the identified other display screens includes adisplay screen that is pre-associated with the first conferee.
 9. Themethod of claim 8 wherein, upon selection of the at least one displayscreen that is pre-associated with the first conferee, the methodincludes presenting shared content on the selected display screen andremoving the shared content from the first interface device displayscreen.
 10. The method of claim 1 wherein the identified other displayscreens include at least a subset of other display screens that arelocated proximate the second conferee.
 11. The method of claim 10further including the steps of identifying the location of the secondconferee within a space and identifying display screens in the generalarea of the second conferee.
 12. The method of claim 1 wherein theidentified other display screens include at least a subset of otherdisplay screens that are located proximate the second conferee and atleast a subset of the other display screens that are located proximatethe first conferee.
 13. The method of claim 1 wherein, in response tothe received selection, shared content from the first sharing window isreplicated on the display screen associated with the selected screenselection option.
 14. The method of claim 1 wherein the first and secondsession interfaces further include first and second private windows,respectively, the method further including enabling the first confereeto access session content in the first private window without sharingthe content with other conferees and enabling the second conferee toaccess session content in the second private window without sharing thecontent with other conferees.
 15. The method of claim 1 furtherincluding the step of, presenting at least one side bar window on thefirst session interface wherein content shared among the first confereeand at least one other conferee but not all conferees is presented inthe at least one side bar window while other content is shared in thesharing windows among all conferees participating in an on-goingsession.
 16. A method of facilitating a collaboration session among aplurality of conferees, each conferee using a distinct interface devicethat includes a distinct display screen, the interface devices includingat least first and second interface devices including first and seconddisplay screens used by a first conferee, the method comprising thesteps of: presenting a first session interface on the first displayscreen, the first session interface including a first session queue anda first sharing window; and during a conference content sharing sessionwhile content is being shared among conferees: (i) identifying otherdisplay screens that may be used to present shared content, the otherdisplay screens including at least the second display screen and atleast one additional display screen that is proximate the firstconferee; (ii) presenting screen selection options for the identifiedother display screens to at least the first conferee via the firstsession interface for selection; (iii) receiving at least one selectionvia the first session interface of at least one of the presented screenselection options; and (iv) in response to the received selection,associating the display screen that is associated with the selectedscreen selection option with the on-going session for accessing sessioncontent.
 17. The method of claim 16 wherein the step of identifying atleast one additional display screen includes identifying the location ofthe first conferee within a space and identifying display screens in thegeneral area of the first conferee.
 18. The method of claim 16 furtherincluding the steps of, in response to the received selection,replicating the content in the first shared window on the selecteddisplay screen.
 19. The method of claim 16 further including the stepsof, in response to the received selection, presenting a private windowfor privately viewing session content on the selected display screen.20. A system of facilitating a collaboration session among a pluralityof conferees, each conferee using a distinct interface device thatincludes a distinct display screen, the interface devices including atleast first and second interface devices including first and seconddisplay screens used by a first conferee, the system comprising: aprocessor programmed to perform the steps of: (i) presenting a firstsession interface on the first display screen, the first sessioninterface including a first session queue and a first sharing window;and (ii) during a conference content sharing session while content isbeing shared among conferees: (a) identifying other display screens thatmay be used to present shared content, the other display screensincluding at least the second display screen and at least one additionaldisplay screen that is proximate the first conferee; (b) presentingscreen selection options for the identified other display screens to atleast the first conferee via the first session interface for selection;(c) receiving at least one selection via the first session interface ofat least one of the presented screen selection options; and (d) inresponse to the received selection, associating the display screen thatis associated with the selected screen selection option with theon-going session for accessing session content.